Page 1838 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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the Auditor-General releases her report on this matter, it will only highlight the fact that in this instance senior management in the then statutory authority failed to properly scope and manage the implementation of a major ICT project, failed to consult with the end users, failed to properly ensure that they were acquiring technology that met their purposes, and failed to advise the government of problems with the system when they were occurring.
I have reviewed all of the documentation provided to ministers—both to me and to my predecessors in this role—about the decision to implement FireLink and updates on its progress in terms of implementation and performance. There is one brief to then Minister Wood outlining that the ESA would undertake a trial of the FireLink technology—from Mr Dunn to Mr Wood. Only one. Then there is a series of reports that outline its performance, all of which highlight that the system was performing and met the ESA’s needs. It was only when the government returned the ESA to the justice portfolio that we saw coming to the attention of government more accurate reporting on the status of this project and the identification of increasing problems in terms of its performance.
That is the work that the government has undertaken. It is a responsible course for the government to take to address the problems and to provide solutions. That is what we are doing. My amendment outlines these points; I commend it to the Assembly.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.11): Mr Speaker, you always know that Mr Corbell is in trouble when he adopts that sort of pious, calm, measured tone instead of going on the attack and proving the opposition wrong. There is the adoption by Mr Corbell of this Pontius Pilate approach, where he would just wash his hands of the matter and say, “But we did not know.” He says that statutory officers need to take responsibility for their decisions. Perhaps ministers need to take responsibility for all of their ministerial responsibilities instead of picking and choosing which ones they will take credit for and which ones they will divest themselves of.
You only have to go to the process. Mr Corbell forgets that when the FireLink project started the Emergency Services Authority did not exist: it was the old ESB, and it was inside JACS. Mr Corbell omitted to tell the Assembly the process that JACS presided over—a government department, part of it responsible to Mr Stanhope, the Attorney-General at the time, and part of it responsible to Mr Wood and subsequently to Mr Hargreaves. He forgets to tell us about that.
The process is quite accurately outlined. A unilateral decision was not taken by the ESA; the contract had to be endorsed by five levels of government scrutiny. Did we forget about this, Mr Corbell? There were five levels: the procurement board, the Treasury-approved procurement unit, the Government Solicitor, the insurance commission and InTACT. All of this started and occurred before the ESA existed. It came into existence on 1 July 2004. They are facts that Mr Corbell just ignores. He does not refute them, but just ignores them: “If I ignore them long enough, they will go away.” You can see him sitting with his hands over his ears going “La, la, la, la, la; I cannot hear you saying this.”
But they not only did that, Mr Speaker: FireLink was the subject of a $97,000 trial when the Emergency Services Bureau was still within the department. The trial started
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