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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Wednesday, 4 August 2004) . . Page.. 3420 ..

MR CORNWELL: Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question. I wonder whether the minister has anything further to add.

MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, Mr Cornwell. In relation to the matters raised by Mrs Dunne, ACT Procurement Solutions is a business unit of the Department of Treasury. As such, it is staffed with public servants who are bound by the same procurement requirements as officers of all departments. There is no requirement under the procurement guidelines for agencies to have MOUs with other ACT government administrative units.

MOUs are usually entered into on a government-to-government basis—intergovernmental not intragovernmental—or between a government and an external body. I am advised that ACT Procurement Solutions does not have MOUs with any ACT government agencies, including the Department of Education and Training. All ACT agencies are part of the same legal entity and there cannot be contracts between parts of the same single legal body.

It is Procurement Solutions’ role to facilitate the procurement process for large and complex works on behalf of the department, including managing the contractual arrangements in accordance with the Government Procurement Act. It is therefore inaccurate to imply that any money has been improperly paid to Procurement Solutions.

So, in answer to Mr Cornwell’s question about whether I am satisfied that the department is currently meeting all of its obligations, the answer is yes.

MR SPEAKER: Before I call on the next question, Mrs Dunne took a point of order to which I did not respond.

Mrs Dunne: Mr Speaker, you did not address my point of order and the minister did not finish answering my question.

MR SPEAKER: Standing order 118 clearly sets out the requirements relating to responses to questions on notice. I cannot dictate the prerogative of ministers to answer questions in the way that they wish. So far as I am concerned, the minister was sticking to the subject matter of the question.

Mrs Dunne: On the point of order, Mr Speaker, I left the minister some time. He spoke for one minute and 15 seconds about the nature of the cull, but he did not address the substance of the question, that is, community consultation, or the lack of it. That was my point. There is no problem about the nature of the cull; the problem relates to the nature of public consultation. My question has not been answered.

Mr Stanhope: On the point of order, Mr Speaker—

MR SPEAKER: I will respond, first, to Mrs Dunne’s point of order. According to the standing orders, the Chief Minister had another 3¾ minutes in which to deal with the question. We have set a time limit of five minutes within which ministers have to respond to questions.

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