Page 5712 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010
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It is important that, if we have this policy, people know about it. It is also important that it is not just limited to who Procurement might think could be interested in this issue. It is an important way of getting more resources into the disability sector. It is an important way of giving those with a disability the opportunity for employment and the opportunity to show the skills that they clearly have and that they are clearly quite willing to put on display. It is a way of engaging the broader community. We might think that they are all in the community sector. Well, they are not. There are a lot of very fine large, medium and small ACT firms out there who are more than interested in what is happening in social procurement. It is very important that they are all given the opportunity to make sure that they can realise those opportunities.
Recommendation 24 says that it is a matter of priority to ensure that appropriate data is captured under this policy and that Procurement Solutions be appropriately resourced to make appropriate adjustments to its current system to monitor and facilitate reporting on social procurement under the new policy commitment. It is important that we try and get a handle on this. Part of the difficulty for the committee was that we certainly did not know how big it was in the ACT and nobody was able to tell us.
Clearly, that is simply because it is in its infancy, but there are a lot of firms. You can go back and look at organisations like Koomarri that have been here for a long, long time and the ACT firms that are in this sector. It would be a good thing to know how many there are, the value of their turnover and their attributes. It would be good if the government was able to start collecting that information and making that available, particularly to us in this place but also to the wider community.
Recommendation 25 calls on the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services, as the lead department in the area, to actually develop methodologies to measure the benefits flowing from social procurement. I think the community at large would be quite delighted at some of the benefits, but if we are going to sell this message to the community at large, we need to have something to tell them. So if we can work out not just what is happening but what the flow-on benefits from that to the entire community are, that would also be a very good thing.
It is a good report, Mr Speaker. I commend it to the Assembly, and particularly recommendation 1. We should not allow what Mr Dean Hall of the CFMEU did to a fine building firm in this city to happen ever again.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Statement by chair
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo): Pursuant to standing order 246A, I wish to make a statement on behalf of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
On 3 June 2010, Auditor-General’s report No 3 of 2010 was referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts for inquiry. The report presented the results of a performance audit that reviewed the implementation of selected budget initiatives by
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