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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4140 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
The Company clearly understands the market and the political environment in which it operates. It has used every opportunity to enhance opportunities for local businesses to win contracts that normally would be beyond their capacity because of their limited range of services compared with those offered in the larger tendering processes.
I will not read it all, but here is another extract:
Nevertheless, CanDeliver has developed successful partnerships with local businesses and it is prime contracting in Commonwealth Government agencies with great success.
CanDeliver is well placed to build on these successes.
Et cetera, et cetera. So that does make it a little bit curious when we are all supporting this motion today to wind it down.
MR OSBORNE (4.59): I, too, will be supporting the motion. I could echo much of what most members have said today. I suppose we can give the Government some credit for coming up with a business idea such as CanDeliver, but I must admit that its claims this week that it has been a success have been just a bit hard to swallow.
Mr Berry: Ossie, they're yours, mate. Be careful.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Berry! Mr Osborne has the call.
MR OSBORNE: I would like Mr Berry to count how many times I have supported his legislation compared to the Government's in the last week. The business neither paid tax nor dividends. It has accumulated cash losses of nearly a million dollars from the first two full years of operation. It is not viable now and this review has stated that, in all likelihood, it will continue to be unviable. That does not sound too much like a success story to me, unless you weigh it up with some of the other things that have happened in the past few years in this Assembly.
At 5.00 pm the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
MR OSBORNE: As I was saying, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, those figures certainly do not sound like a success story to me. From one point of view, CanDeliver may have done okay, having bid for 22 contracts and won 12 of them. However, if the blinkers are taken off, the wider view reveals that, despite the best intentions, the claims of success ring more than a bit hollow. It sounds a bit like the football side that loses the match but said that they won first half, or the surgeon who announces that the operation was a success but, unfortunately, the patient died.
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