Page 1406 - Week 04 - Thursday, 26 March 2009
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Appropriation Bill 2008-09 (No. 3) that will be directed towards labour, plant and materials.
The response is weasel words. It is not agreed because they simply cannot do it. They have no idea when they tender these things what they are actually getting. This response perhaps goes to the heart of some of the problems we see with this ACT government. We hear it from industry with the problems with tendering. There is uncertainty in the way they do things. They do not give notice. They do not know what is coming. And from this response to this recommendation it would appear that they actually do not know what they are getting; that things are not tendered or contracted in a way that would enable this information to be extracted.
Surely when we have these processes put in place the ACT taxpayer—the ACT government, on behalf of the ACT taxpayer—should know, should have an understanding of, what they are buying. They should have an understanding of the breakdown of what they are buying. This response I think is quite a telling response from the government. It indicates that they do not know what they are buying. That is quite interesting—that they do not know what they are getting. And I think it is quite a reasonable recommendation made by the committee. Once again, this one is actually the one that is not agreed. The rest have been dismissed in quite a cursory way with simply “noted”—not really taking account of the work that has been done. But recommendation 4, and the response to it by the government, is quite telling. It demonstrates that they do not know what they are buying when they go to tender.
Ms Gallagher stated that the idea for a third appropriation grew out of a particular roundtable where issues were raised around the building and construction area. The Master Builders Association of the ACT has stated, “There was a degree of nervousness in the construction and building industry, more so for small businesses, about what the future holds.” We had this debate earlier, but it is worth restating it in this context. We have got a government that are going to spend $12.76 million in this financial year; that is the response. But what we have languishing in that through our planning system are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars of developments that are being unreasonably delayed because this government simply cannot manage their planning system. They have acknowledged as much. They have acknowledged as much through the regulation we were debating earlier this morning. The minister has acknowledged that it is not getting done; that if you want to get something done quickly you have to find a special exemption.
What we do know is that there are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars of developments that are languishing. And we know that if they were able to be put through the system in a timely manner, in a way that people would expect, we would see the flow-on economic benefits, we would see the employment that comes with it and we would see the economic investment that comes with those developments going ahead.
So this goes to the crux of it. We have the Treasurer saying it came out of this roundtable, particularly around the building and construction area, yet it is the government’s own systems and it is the government’s own departments that are not getting the job done and ensuring that these developments can get through the system.
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