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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (1 May) . . Page.. 1272 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

I can advise that, in meetings, I have virtually got a nod from Treasury officials that if it was reduced to a quarterly process the effort would be made to make sure that they were representative reports, and we would not have the Chief Minister/Treasurer talking in February about a $90 million surplus as at January's financial report because, quite plainly, that was a nonsense at the time.

We were concerned about the level of detail given within the bill. For example, there was $6 million additional funding given to InTACT, our IT provider, under the line, "An injection for operating requirements". Not a great deal of information is contained in that statement. So we pursued that. Virtually, questions were taken on notice and we got back an answer saying, "Well, $4.4 million of that was contractor expenses." That, still, is not a lot of information to indicate what the contractors did and what was the cause of the additional expenditure requirement. We therefore have a recommendation that an appropriate degree of detail be provided. It is a bit difficult to be so specific, so I guess that recommendation is written in a vain hope, and written to register the committee's frustration with its inability to read from the report any meaningful rationalisation of what had occurred.

While I am on the subject of InTACT, the committee observes that a few years ago when expenditure in InTACT rose within the budget we were informed that that was because we were going through a modernisation process. Now it appears that the modernisation process has become perpetual-a classic public sector phenomenon. We now have expenditure on InTACT, the IT provider, of $62 million per annum. That is quite heavy expenditure. We make some observations about expenditure of that magnitude to be externally monitored.

I note personally that the contract that we had with Fujitsu seems to have died on the vine. It was a promise of great increases in employment within the ACT, but it seems to have declined, and it seems to have declined in favour of a supplier, CSC. I have asked questions before about relationships with CSC, given that the former head of InTACT, Mr Olaf Moon, is married to the local head and director of CSC. I have been assured that appropriate measures have been taken for arm's length dealings between the two, but this does point up the need for scrutiny and the need for a bit more information than "$6 million injection for operating purposes".

We note that in this bill the government has written off the debt to the Kingston Foreshore Development Authority, ostensibly to convince merchant bankers that it is a viable authority. We must be working with some none too bright merchant bankers who need to see that happen before 30 June this year, when it could have been done in the budget or heralded in the budget today and they would have known about it. But it does then have an impact upon our bottom line.

Also, we see a further write-off in relation to the Bruce Stadium. A further $5.5 million of debt has been written off. I have to make some comments about the Bruce Stadium. The government in recent times has taken to describing the Bruce Stadium as a community facility. Now, if it is a community facility, it is being accounted for with the write-off of debt and the write-off of its capital investment quite differently from the other community facilities that we operate within the territory. For example, the hospital is a community facility. It runs largely on taxpayers' funding. The assets are maintained

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