Page 3650 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 27 October 2015
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best price but the opposition wants to know exactly what we are willing to pay for it and put that on the public record. Those two things are not compatible. So Mr Hanson needs to think about how he wants to operate and how he expects government to get the best possible price for our community if he wants everything to be signalled in advance.
Certainly something that I have given some contemplation to in my role as a minister is how we are transparent through the budget process but at the same time not simply saying, “Here is our price,” and everybody, of course, bidding to exactly that price. These are the challenges. But the bottom line is that neither Minister Corbell nor the other ministers are in a position to disclose that at this point in time. So it may suit Mr Hanson’s political agenda but it is not actually how it works. I think his first example was a particularly weak one.
I focus on some other strong examples of the sort of transparency I think the community really appreciates when it comes to government operations. Interestingly Minister Barr, the Chief Minister, already cited the bike data that we have made available this year. That has been a really positive example where we are making that data available. The community actually responded very strongly to that and started using it to make various maps on their own and certainly writing to me with examples where they have done analysis and identified particular trends.
Similarly in my time as minister responsible for roads, when that was still in TAMS, I worked with Roads ACT to publish the traffic warrant system. This was a mechanism used by Roads ACT to prioritise road works and intersection improvements in the territory. That has now been made publicly available and that means that constituents can actually see that list. They can see where an intersection or road black spot that they are concerned about is placed on the list, why it is there and, again, people have found that very useful. That day-to-day transparency I think is very important. It is not remarkable. It does not warrant a motion in the Assembly. But it is the sort of thing that a government that is committed to transparency puts in place.
In the more contentious spaces, just at lunch-time today the government released the expenditure review report from MRCagney, the experts that we engaged to look at an expenditure review for the ACTION bus network. That report has been released. There are some areas that are redacted for commercial-in-confidence reasons but they are for private operators or commercial companies that are not within the government’s realm, and it is not in our remit to release that sort of data. But the full report has been released.
There is some tough reading in there from a government point of view, and there are some significant critiques of the ACTION bus network, but that full report has been made available. That is the sort of transparency the community expects and it is the sort of transparency I am certainly committed to, and the government as a whole has taken a very strong position on it.
Similarly, with the Capital Metro Authority business case for stage 1 of light rail—I know those opposite do not like it—the reality is that the business case is out there. You may disagree with it—and clearly some people do—but this is the only
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