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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3554 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
I repeat: "The handling of the tender selection process was nothing less than appalling". Given the coroner's definition of the notion of arms-length negotiation, this Assembly is entitled to ask why the tender process was so appalling. Was there, in fact, any undue influence - any influence, pressure or domination - on the officers responsible for the negotiations? If there was, given the intrusion of the Chief Minister's office in the process, what was the source of the undue influence? The Assembly is entitled to ask these questions and entitled to an unequivocal answer.
The Assembly is also entitled to know the Government's response to the coroner's criticisms of the procedure that saw government officials prepare a pre-signed letter of acceptance for part of the tender before the meeting to approve the recommendation. The coroner criticised this process in the most trenchant terms. He says unbelievingly:
This procedure surely cannot be regarded as sound government business practice and should be reviewed. It seems to me that if such a practice exists it places the Government at serious risk in terms of the potential for fraudulent conduct by unethical operators.
Does the Government have a response to this criticism that its fundamental business practice was so flawed as to expose it to fraud? How did this business practice become so flawed? Why was it not identified and corrected? Why has the Government not reacted more strongly to the coroner's findings?
These dealings were the dealings that saw Messrs McCracken and Fenwick appointed, and the coroner, of course, has found that the actions of those contractors on site contributed to the tragedy. They should not have been appointed. As the coroner reported:
The process by which those persons were appointed was connected to ... death. If proper efforts had been made to check that these people were qualified, they would never have been given the job.
Those are the coroner's findings in relation to the appointment of the contractors. I repeat: The coroner said:
The process by which those persons were appointed was connected to ... death. If proper efforts had been made to check that these people were qualified, they would never have been given the job.
Almost every page of this 657-page report contains an indictment of the Government's administrative processes. There is none more serious than that I have just read.
I spoke a little earlier about the discussion of tender details outside the tender process. Of course, these discussions between the Chief Minister and her adviser were not the only evidence of the unwarranted intrusion by the Chief Minister's office and department into the day-to-day affairs on the demolition site. A senior executive in the department authorised the payment of an additional $50,000 to accept the final bid for the implosion. A departmental officer at a significantly lower level authorised - on
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