Page 2427 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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proposal, when a member of the audience then asked a question of Jon Stanhope about why his daughter had had to wait for eight hours with a broken arm in the emergency department while the government pursued this and other projects, Jon Stanhope bit his head off. I think that was the moment when I saw the embarrassment around the tables. I remember, I think it was, Elias Hallaj putting his head in his hands. We are back to the future. But of course the government does not have to do that anymore because they hide from the debates.
The reason I go back through that history and the reason why that is so important is that the current proposal is built extensively on the previous one. Essentially, you have got the same design for death star II. They are just looking for a new builder. On the website—you can go to the website the government put out—practically every document is from the previous proposal. They put a press release on for the new proposal, they put the ROI there, but all of the facts, all of the business case, all of the proposal, all the costings, are exactly back where we were, documents dated 2009, 2010. Nothing is new. This is the same proposal that they have just rebadged, recast and brought back to the community.
Mr Smyth: Just ask why.
MR HANSON: Why? We will get to the “why” soon. There are some odd things in the statement of requirement. Some of them come out of the government’s office strategy. It has got to be a certain size, got to be within a couple of minutes from the Assembly. And those criteria that have been listed in it—the A-grade and a whole bunch of other criteria—really limit the scope of what you can do. They really do it unnecessarily. This is part of this whole demand that the government has that it has all got to be in a central hub. It has either got to be in one building or on a campus where everybody is all co-located.
Health bureaucrats have got to be with education bureaucrats. Education bureaucrats have got to be with JACS bureaucrats because then, of course, what happens is that no-one will ever leave their job and everybody is more efficient. But if that is the case, if that is the reality, if they want all the bureaucrats in one spot, riddle me this: why is it that they are moving Shared Services to Gungahlin? I support putting an office block in Gungahlin. I support putting ACT public servants in Gungahlin.
If you want a hub, if you are going to have this hub and spoke-type philosophy and if you put all your central policy makers, administrators and bureaucrats in one spot—and the element of this government that is the most centralised is Shared Services; if you look at what Shared Services do, from their website, they are established to deliver more efficient and quality whole-of-government services across the ACT public service—and if it is all right to send them off to Gungahlin but you have got to have everybody else brought back into the centre, it does not stack up. Shared Services delivers ICT for whole of government: human resources, things like payroll, HR systems, recruitment, employee relations, Territory Records Office. That can be in Gungahlin but everybody else has got to be 10 minutes from the Assembly. I do not understand it. It is just not logical.
Procurement, which supports services across ACT government, can work out of Gungahlin but every education bureaucrat has got to be in the city.
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