Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 3180 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

In January this year, Commonwealth, state and territory censorship ministers approved the new guidelines. The new guidelines are the result of a comprehensive review conducted by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. In the course of the review processes, the OFLC received 372 submissions from the public, the film and computer game industries, and community and professional organisations. The new combined guidelines are the result of the review. The new combined guidelines have been reformatted to be easier for the OFLC's board to use and simpler and clearer for the Australian community to understand.

Consultation with the community demonstrated that, overall, there was no significant change in community standards. The new combined guidelines reflect this and do not change the classification standards. These combined guidelines meet the challenges of classifying convergent media, such as computer games with film components and DVDs with game components. All Commonwealth, state and territory ministers agreed at the last censorship ministers meeting to table in their respective parliaments the new combined guidelines for the classification of films and computer games.

Subordinate legislation

MR QUINLAN (Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Business and Tourism, and Minister for Sport, Racing and Gaming): For the information of members, I present the following paper:

I ask for leave to make a statement.

Leave granted.

MR QUINLAN: These guidelines-made under the powers of the ACT Government Procurement Board-empower the ACT government to make procurement guidelines. This procurement guideline sets dollar value thresholds that territory entities must comply with, when seeking quotations or inviting public tenders for goods, services and works. The guideline also sets out the process chief executives are to comply with when public tenders, or the minimum number of quotations, are not to be sought.

Industry was consulted as part of the development of this procedure guideline and overall provided positive feedback to the new thresholds. In general, the changes were seen as being positive in reducing the cost to suppliers when responding to detailed public tenders for projects valued under $100,000.

The ACT Government Procurement Board also recognised that it had been eight years since the original thresholds were set, and that changes were appropriate to address the impact of inflation and the introduction of the GST. This procurement guideline demonstrates that, through effective consultation with industry, we are able to put in place procurement policies and practices which reduce the effort and cost incurred by

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .