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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4155 ..
Leave granted.
MR OSBORNE: I ask for leave to move an amendment.
Leave granted.
MR OSBORNE: I move:
Omit all words after "That", substitute the following words:
"to assist the Select Committee on Contracting and Procurement Processes in its inquiry, this Assembly requires the Chief Minister to present to the Chair of the Committee by 12 noon, Friday 10 December 1999, the following documents relating to Bruce Stadium:
(1) hirer's agreement between Bruce Operations Pty Ltd and the Canberra Raiders;
(2) hirer's agreement between Bruce Operations Pty Ltd and the ACT Brumbies;
(3) hirer's agreement between Bruce Operations Pty Ltd and the Canberra Cosmos; and
(4) agreement between the ACT Government and the Sydney Olympic Organising Committee (SOCOG) for the staging of the Olympic football in Canberra.".
I am pleased to move this amendment. It puts the decision on contracts back to the rightful place, which is the select committee. Since this debate was adjourned last week, I have spent some time discussing the concepts of commercial-in-confidence with members and others who handle this type of information on a regular basis. Obviously there needs to be some protection to companies when they do business with the Government. I think it would be wrong for us to expose genuine trade secrets and some categories of commercially sensitive information. However, I believe that these instances must be rare and very genuine.
I did receive some advice from the Clerk in relation to the Government providing contracts. I will not harp on that, because it has become clear to me that the contracts will be provided to the committee. I have spoken to both the Raiders' and the Brumbies' hierarchy within the last week. I indicated to them that the fight they had been dragged into was pointless from their perspective, and they have agreed to trust the committee, when we look at this information, not to divulge anything commercially sensitive to them. I think they understand the role that the committee will play in the information on taxpayers' money, which is what we have all been waiting to see. I am confident that the committee will handle it professionally.
I believe that when it comes to taxpayers' money all the information must be on the table. There can be no commercial-in-confidence arguments when we are talking about that issue. Those organisations, plus the Cosmos and SOCOG, are receiving taxpayers'
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