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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2880 ..

In the early days of trying to settle this dispute, the claimant wouldn’t give us the most fundamental records. I have to say that it is, to a large extent, unfair on the people that work at the coalface, including people in my office, who are trying to settle this to paint it, by implications in questions, as some sort of process whereby the bad government rode roughshod over this poor innocent supplier. I know it happens in this place that we get now and then a sort of issue that gets off the rails. Take, for example, reporting under the relevant section of the Child Protection Act, which has now turned into something it never was.

This matter, I think, has been settled. I think the government has been more than generous in the settlement. It has not been protracted because the government has purely been obstinate; it has been a very difficult process to sort through—as I said, in no small way difficult because of the poorness and the paucity of records of the providers of the service.

It started off as a very ambitious project on the part of Wizard. They were going to build a product for WorkCover into which they were prepared to invest more than WorkCover would pay them. They would be building a product that would then be a marketable product on the wider market, as I understand it.

That is not the case. When it became clear that that wasn’t the case, I’m not sure. Nevertheless, there was a lot of developmental work done, incremental work done, for which, I have to say, the authorisation process was not the best. You would have thought that someone that was providing the level of resources that went into this would have kept better records.

MRS CROSS: Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question, and I thank the minister for his assistance in trying to get this resolved. Could you provide the following information to the Assembly: the amount of the final payment for work undertaken by Wizard; the amount of the final payment for the interest incurred by Wizard; and the amount of the final payment for costs incurred in the dispute resolution process by Wizard? Could the minister perhaps advise the Assembly whether Wizard has been compensated for damages or has received any reasonable compensation for loss of business?

MR QUINLAN: In order to get the detail, I will take that question on notice. But I cannot recall any question of damages, for God’s sake! If anybody gets damages it should be my office. I will work out the costs. I am not sure that we have measured all the costs. Certainly, I do not know that we have measured the costs associated with the work that was done in my office or in Treasury trying to sort it through. So I can only get you the directly recorded costs of the process.

Again, I am not sure exactly how much detail the firm Wizard would want us to put on the public record. In the first instance, with your indulgence, we will check with them and if they are happy for their details to become a matter of public record in this place then so be it. Otherwise, I will seek your indulgence not be required to table it.

Mr Stanhope: It could be commercial-in-confidence.

MR QUINLAN: Yes.

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