Page 2911 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
think that you had got some reward for the efforts that you had made. But these hopes were dashed when the government simply pulled out. The Chief Minister simply said, “We have just changed our priorities. We now think we will build a subacute facility instead.”
Surely, with all the work that has gone into planning the new health network of facilities, the government had worked out that need before they went to tender on this project. I think it raises very serious concerns about the government’s commitment to the construction industry in the ACT. At a time when a lot of the cranes have disappeared off the skyline and a lot of the projects that the government talks about are years away from coming out of the ground, for something like this that had proceeded quite a way along the track to be dashed at this last minute I think is very disappointing. I know that the firms involved are still quite upset about what happened. Recommendation 15 of the estimates report on page 29 states:
The Committee recommends that the Government better manage their procurement processes to minimise the number of tenders withdrawn or cancelled causing loss to tenderers.
It is important that we honour our word. It is important that the government, when it deals with business, deals with it in an open fashion. I suspect that there are a lot of people who will be scratching their heads and shaking their heads the next time the government puts out a tender. They will ask the question, “Is it worth the effort? Will they actually follow through and make sure that they actually deliver on this tender?”
Recommendation 16 of the committee states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government further extend the provision of online tendering.
The committee notes that the government have said they will be increasing the proportion online, but surely in this day and age the majority of our tenders can be online and surely in a city that regards itself as very IT-savvy, that is certainly the way to do it. We look forward to that occurring.
In Shared Services Human Resources there were a number of issues raised, particularly the implications of the large number of people who constantly act in higher duties in ACT public service positions. Is that fair to them? Are we getting the best out of our dollar by having one person out of their job in another job and somebody else then backfilling the job that they were in? It is important and the committee has not made recommendations in this area. But I think it is very important we make sure that people understand when they are acting how long they are likely to be there for. If the position is not going to be filled, they should know the future of that position. It is just good HR practice rather than having people hanging around for extended periods on higher duties.
We had some interesting conversations about HR systems. The old chris21 system came up. Some members would not remember. We had huge discussions about chris21 years and years ago. It is kind of funny all this time later to find out that we
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video