Page 1506 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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aware, along with the entire Canberra community, the capital metro project attracted tenders from multinational consortia.
The territory changing the conditions of a procurement while it is still in process, or enacting retrospective changes, is a serious step to take. It risks deterring bidders for future projects from investing their time and energy in putting competitive tenders together, which threatens the territory's ability to achieve value for money from its procurements by reducing the competitive market.
Mr Coe’s bill would result in a less competitive marketplace due to a perception that the territory cannot be trusted not to change the conditions under which a tender is conducted and a fear that commercially sensitive material in an eventual contract may be published and revealed to competitors. A competitive marketplace is critical to the territory achieving value for money when it undertakes a procurement.
The procurement act requires the territory to have regard to open and effective competition when making value-for-money assessments in a procurement. It is hard to imagine a less fair scenario than changing the rules for participating in a procurement part of the way through and subjecting only one entity to those changed rules.
Mr Coe does not seem to understand that having the option of keeping text confidential is for the benefit of both businesses and government. It is a crucial part of the territory achieving value for money for its procurements. Businesses will not want to contract with the territory if they are not able to keep information that has a commercial value confidential when the contracts are published.
Whilst the government disagrees with his decision, I have assumed that Mr Coe has weighed up the costs and the alleged benefits of cancelling the capital metro contract if the Liberal Party wins government and has decided that cancelling a contract is worth the cost. However, I am not sure that he has considered as thoroughly the potential costs of this bill.
I can understand Mr Coe’s disappointment that a supposed billion dollar light rail project is actually going to cost much less than the government had initially forecast. It certainly reduces his argument against the project significantly. Instead, he tries to accuse the government of hiding information and demanding that it be released.
But the total value of the contract is required to be published. Any amendments to the contract valued at $25,000 or more, cumulatively, must be published. Information that is permitted to be kept confidential for reasons of commercial value or for other reasons allowed by the procurement act—not merely being labelled commercial in confidence but having a commercial value, privacy implications or other legal implications—must be agreed by the responsible territory entity. The reasons for keeping text confidential must be published. Mr Coe is trying to paint the government as secretive about the capital metro contract when it is anything but.
To sum up, this bill could commercially damage the capital metro consortium due to a loss of competitive advantage, with potential for legal action and associated costs to the territory; the bill could potentially lead to further legal action and claims for
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