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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2001 ..
MS CARNELL (continuing):
excluded from the significant business that exists in New South Wales and Queensland. The reason that agreement is in place is to make sure there is a level playing field and that all companies in Australia can bid for contracts and to ensure that those contracts are determined on the basis of a level playing field.
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, my question, through you, is to the Minister for Health and Community Care. In June the minister announced the government was to award a contract to establish a medical call centre to the US-based High Performance Healthcare. Can the Chief Minister say whether any cost-benefit analysis was made of the successful tender and other bids, including that by the ACT Division of General Practice? If a cost-benefit comparison was made between competing tenders, will the minister release it?
MR MOORE: I think I need to correct the premise of the question. As I understand it, the company you referred to as a US-based company is no more US based than the division of GPs and Community Care. In other words, they had a relationship with an American company, primarily to do with software. Both tenders, as I understand it, had that. I believe all tenders did. There were a number of tenders for this call centre. They were done at arm's length from me. There was a probity process to ensure that they were done correctly.
The information provided to me is that there were 13 criteria the evaluation committee considered. On one criterion Community Care and the division of GPs were ahead by one point. That criterion was local content. On all other 12 criteria High Performance Healthcare were a superior performer. This was done at arm's length from the government. That is the information provided to me. In those circumstances you would have to say that the appropriate thing to do was to award the contract.
I was provided with information on the cost per unit of service, I think it was, or a costing comparison anyway. The cheapest tender did not win. The costs of the winning tender, the division of GPs and Community Care were not dissimilar. The decision was not made on a cost basis. The decision to eliminate the cheapest tender, as I understand it, was made because that tender was not able to satisfactorily meet the criteria. The final decision was made by the chief executive of the Department of Health and Community Care, as is appropriate, at arm's length from me.
MR HARGREAVES: I ask a supplementary question. I would like to correct the nomenclature the minister used. I referred to the US-based High Performance Healthcare. He referred to it in his response as Community Care. I would just like to let him know that Community Care is in fact his own department. You got the names wrong. Have a look at Hansard. I can understand the minister getting confused between his own department and the US government.
MR SPEAKER: Do you have a supplementary question?
MR HARGREAVES: My supplementary question is: what evidence does the minister have to suggest that Canberrans will use a call centre, instead of doing as they do now and go to the emergency department of the Canberra Hospital?
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