Page 1869 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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problems with FireLink. The opposition would entirely reject that. Surely, any authority, independent or otherwise, which spends government resources is something that should be supervised and scrutinised by government. We reject the notion that the only reason that they have been able to identify the problem is because emergency services ceased to be an independent authority. It is the job of government to ensure that its resources are correctly spent and utilised in the protection of its community.
The second point is that the minister said, “Let’s wait for the Auditor-General’s report so that we can see a little bit more about what might need to be done in terms of the gap that now exists with the sacking of FireLink.” Again, the opposition entirely rejects that proposition. Yes, we are all keen to see the Auditor-General’s report, but the Auditor-General is looking at project management issues, financial probity issues, and is not looking at what should replace FireLink. At least we have now heard the minister say that he will come back to this place, so he has partly identified that issue. But let us not depend on the A-G’s report before any decisions are made about organising a mobile data system. Let us not rely on the Auditor-General’s report. Let us not use that as an excuse for any further inaction.
The third point is that the minister indicated that CAD may well be a long-term solution. He may be right in saying that CAD is a solution. We believe that the CAD system, piggy-backed by the Mobitex capability, could very well be the answer. Surely, this matter should be expedited. It should not be a long-term solution because there was a lot of work done on analysing CAD—
Mr Corbell: I did not say long term.
MR PRATT: You said “longer”, and we are talking about a bushfire season that is imminent. Surely work should have been done, and the minister should have been able to give us at least a progress report here today on whether CAD could be adapted and when it could be adapted by, because some time has elapsed since the sacking and the collapse of FireLink.
Again, we have seen the minister blaming the officials for their failure to scope, their failure to advise government regarding the problems of FireLink in the early days. We believe that Mr Wood and then Mr Hargreaves had ample opportunity to test the progress of FireLink. It was a significant project involving a lot of money. It was a project that covered a vital capability, and it has escaped three ministers. I am prepared to accept that Minister Corbell, after about 12 months, was finally getting around to it, but even that is not good enough. The evidence was there, and a new, keen, young minister should have gone to this area quickly and tested for himself the way that FireLink was progressing. That did not occur.
What is now going to happen to the $4.5 million junked project FireLink? We have got $4.5 million worth of junk sitting somewhere, and we need to know what is going to be done with that. Is it now just waste? Does it go to landfill, or is there a recovery exercise? Can some recoveries be undertaken? The opposition also wants to know this: will the government table the internal report, the Radic report, into the performance of FireLink’s project management? Similarly, what about the Evans-Peek report? Will that be tabled by the government in order to explain what has occurred?
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