Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In fact, the person in this chamber who does need a lot of help is Senator Vanstone. You see that when you look at the document entitled Management of the tender process for the detention services contract, because it demonstrates that this government has not kept its eye on the ball in the management of detention centres right from day one. As a consequence, it has continued not to bother to oversee the detention centre arrangements, not to ensure that it is getting value for money in the contracts and not to ensure that it is in fact doing the right thing by people who end up in the detention centres. The worst atrocity is not to ensure that people are not locked up unlawfully.

One of the sad things is that, even after the case of Cornelia Rau has been ventilated in this chamber, even after the sad story of her plight has been brought to the attention of the minister, we are still now, many months later, in a position where Cornelia Rau has not been able to secure a reasonable compensation package from this government. It really offends me, I have to say, and it should offend every senator in here, that this government is unable to recognise this, move forward and leave the family and Ms Rau in a position where they can have these matters finalised so that their lives can move on.

Turning to the contract itself, what is really surprising is that the minister announced yesterday that the contract would be terminated, but not as of today or tomorrow—she will let the contract run. We also found out, a little earlier in the week, that Minister Vanstone will not oversight the detention centres. We will have a parliamentary secretary oversighting the detention centres. We now have a minister who, back in 2002, outsourced the management contract for detention centres and left them in a terrible state—and you can go back and read the Palmer inquiry to see how they failed people. The minister outsourced that—she did not want to take responsibility and failed to competently ensure that there was oversight of the contracts.

The next position the minister has adopted is not only to outsource the contract itself but to then outsource the oversight of the contract. Having failed to manage the outsourcing of the contract, we now have a situation where the minister has failed to oversight that contract and, rather than try to rectify it, rather than try to look at the issues and fix them, she has decided to outsource it completely—take it off her plate—and say: ‘I give up; I can’t do it. Here, Mr Robb, you deal with the oversight of the management contract for detention centres.’

What does that leave? That leaves a minister with very little left to do. Most of her portfolio has now been outsourced. Indigenous affairs is no longer dealt with by her. The contract for and management of detention centres is no longer to be dealt with by Minister Vanstone. Multicultural affairs is a matter that she has not turned her mind to for some time, I suspect. It is certainly not a matter that she would oversight; it has been outsourced. We now have a situation where the minister should take a good hard look at what she does do. I cannot work out what is left. There is not too much left. She has really become, I suspect, a time server rather than anything else in this portfolio. Mr Howard should bite the bullet and recognise that the minister should be removed from this area. He is doing it, though, one piece at a time. It is not going unnoticed. It certainly is noticed that her portfolio is now being sliced off because of the way she has managed it, because of the failures that have been attracted to this area and because of her inability to ensure proper management and oversight of these matters. I have sought leave to talk about this issue but I will not take up the full time that is available.

It is worth turning to some of the issues highlighted in the report by the Australian National Audit Office, ANAO. Item 93 refers to:

ambiguity in DIMIA’s management of the roles and responsibilities of key advisors and personnel;

deficient recordkeeping, impacting DIMIA’s ability to demonstrate accountability and transparency in this procurement;

weaknesses in the conduct and documentation of contract negotiations; and

deficiencies in the assessment of tender bids against the value for money criteria.

Value for money criteria should be the first thing you want to get out of a contract if you are going to properly oversight it, given that you have outsourced it in the first place. As indicated in the report, the agency’s response to that is: ‘The department is implementing a wide range of measures to improve administration.’ Of course, that is going to be done not by the minister responsible, not by the minister who should take responsibility, but by being outsourced to Mr Robb to take responsibility. Let us hope that Mr Robb can do a much better job—in fact, he would not have to do much to do a much better job—than the present minister in this area. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.