Page 87 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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weeks, and that was why the government was not prepared to accept the site until 20 March 2009, when it was—
Mr Seselja: You could open it!
Mrs Dunne: You said that for all intents and purposes it was ready on opening day.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order, Mrs Dunne, Mr Seselja, please! If you want to have a discussion, go outside and do it. Mr Corbell.
MR CORBELL: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. The committee’s findings in regard to human rights compliance also reflect a naivety and terrible shortcoming in the committee’s deliberations. In a jurisdiction where human rights compliance is to the fore, such examination was certainly a legitimate course of action. The government considers it totally appropriate for the committee to examine human rights issues in the remand centres which related to the delay in the delivery of the AMC.
However, it is one thing to examine issues and quite another to make findings—findings in regard to matters of law, findings in regard to matters of human rights law. What qualification, utilising what evidence-based analysis and what principles of proportionality, did the committee use to come to a conclusion that the delays had further contributed to the ACT’s remand facilities not being human rights compliant?
Over and above all, I was offended by the committee’s first finding that strongly implied that the government and its agencies had not properly complied with the inquiry’s requests. I know that government and staff of its agencies bent over backwards to make themselves available for hearings and to provide thousands of pages of documents to the committee.
With these concerns, it should not have been a surprise to the government and me that the committee would get wrong the very issue at the heart of this inquiry—the issue for which the inquiry was called—the delay in the commencement of operation of the AMC and the impact of that delay. Despite all the information provided, the committee found that the delays in the commencement of operations were not solely due to the security system but to a range of other factors as well. This is not the case. This finding is wrong.
As the government has repeatedly said, and continues to say, the delays in the commencement of operations at the AMC were due to a failure by the builder, Bovis Lend Lease, and its security subcontractor, Chubb, to complete the security system. This is not just the opinion of the government. I can now advise that in a decision handed down in July last year, an independent expert contracted under the dispute resolution provisions of the contract found in favour of the territory in regard to the issue of delays.
Bovis Lend Lease had disputed the imposition of liquidated damages due to delays in the completion of the security system, claiming that other problems that had been outside its control had contributed to the delay in finalisation of the project, and it sought an extension of the agreed contract completion date on this basis. The
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