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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 3581 ..
MR HARGREAVES (continuing):
that is Totalcare Ltd -
the Project Director, upon receipt of the letter from HSUA, to engage in a full consultative process with the relevant experienced personnel ... The critical difficulty again was the absence of advice from a structural engineer and a demolition explosives expert as required by the ACT Demolition Code of Practice. If these two independent experts had been available to Mr Lavers, the CMD -
that is, the Chief Minister's Department -
or the Government to provide such substantive advice, then the tragedy may well have been averted.
The Chief Minister said that she knew that there was no expertise in implosion either within her own office, the department, WorkCover, Totalcare Ltd, or Project Coordination of Australia Pty Ltd. So if the Chief Minister knew, as she said in evidence, that there was no such expertise locally to hand, why did she not commission independent experts? Why did she sign the letter, knowing, as she did, that no such expertise was available within the various levels of contract administration; and knowing, as she did, that the Glenn report was not a risk assessment, but two feasibility studies?
Why did the Chief Minister sign a letter saying that there had been an ongoing process of risk assessment by the Government's expert advisers, when she knew that there had been no risk assessments and no government expert advisers? Was she, as head of government, as the managing director of the client group and as Minister accepting responsibility at territory level for the project as Chief Minister, knowingly breaching the ACT demolition code of practice?
The coroner also said:
The description of RGA reports by the Chief Minister as studies relating to safety concerns or risk assessment and the adoption by her and her then department head, Mr Walker, of those descriptions, showed, at best, a misunderstanding by those individuals of the contents and purpose of the RGA reports and, at worst, an attempt to use by then outdated materials for a purpose for which they were neither designed nor intended.
This is either incompetence or something more sinister.
Mr Speaker, it will be said again, as it was in the coroner's report, that the Chief Minister and her senior officers were entitled to rely upon the information provided to them by Mr Lavers of TCL. However, I cannot accept this entirely, because, firstly, it merely shifts the blame from the Government to the Public Service and, secondly, does not accord with the fact admitted by the Chief Minister that she knew such expertise did not exist. How any sane manager would accept technical advice from anyone when it is
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