Page 1103 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I need to make one further comment in response to a comment made by the minister when he presented this bill. In talking about the publication of the text of contracts, the minister said that this action proves “the government’s commitment to openness and transparency”. I would remind the minister that this action does nothing of the sort. The publication of this information may establish or demonstrate the government’s commitment to openness and transparency, but it certainly does not prove the case. There are many instances where this Labor government has acted precisely to protect information which should have been in the public domain but which we in opposition have either had to request through the FOI process or sought by other means. We are still waiting, for example, for the secret Costello report to be released for public information and discussion.
Mr Speaker, with these comments, the opposition will be supporting the bill.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (10.37): The Greens will also be supporting this bill. As Mr Smyth said, it makes some minor amendments to the Government Procurement Act. Firstly, the threshold values of contracts are to be something to be prescribed by regulation. This seems a sensible thing to do. In the public accounts committee we did a long inquiry on procurement. That is effectively recommendation 2 implemented, so that is a positive. The other thing is about reducing the frequency of contracts reporting to the Legislative Assembly. I am quite happy not to do as many 246A statements on behalf of PAC; I think that is a quite sensible thing.
I am, however, a little disappointed. PAC made, I think, 25 recommendations in a year-and-a-half-long inquiry into procurement. There were quite a few more things which the government could and should have acted on. I will not go through all 25 but I will just highlight a few. Recommendation 8 says:
The Committee recommends that ACT Procurement Solutions engage specifically with representatives of micro, small and medium sized businesses to refine procurement processes to ensure that they are accessible to that sector.
After yesterday’s motion about family businesses, and appreciating that not all family businesses are small businesses, given the sentiments expressed there, it would have been good for the government to be able to say that they have looked at how they can make their procurement work well for small and medium-sized businesses.
I will quickly go on. There is a whole series of recommendations which talk about looking at triple bottom line impacts and sustainability issues. Recommendation 18 says:
The Committee recommends that explicit reference to sustainability, expressed in terms similar to those used in section 11 of the Financial Management Act 1996, be included in section 22A of the Government Procurement Act 2001 as matters which must be considered in pursuing “…the best value for money” objective.
As a Green who is committed to sustainability, I am disappointed that, as the government is now updating the procurement act, it did not look at all the things that
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video