Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You were not here, Senator, at the time. This is a good one. You should actually listen to this one. Five million dollars was given to a zoo near Kuranda. Less than a month later it went into receivership. We have people on that side talking about looking after government money, looking after taxpayers’ money, but $5 million was given to a zoo, which is against the regional tourism plan anyway, and within a month it was in receivership. What sort of due diligence gives you that sort of outcome? What sort of due diligence was applied to giving a large sum of money—I cannot recall the actual figure at the moment—to a hotel in the town of Atherton for a so-called convention centre, and this is the hotel that has topless barmaids on Friday afternoons, for example? What sort of sense is there in spending that sort of money on a pub on the main street of Atherton for a so-called convention centre? It was totally built out. It was not possible for it to be built. This is the sort of waste that we had to deal with time after time from those on the other side.

My good friend Senator Sterle suggested that I mention the only piece of major infrastructure that the previous government could look to. That is the building of a railway that does not make any money: the extension of the Adelaide-Darwin railway. So if those on that side want to talk about waste and mismanagement I think they need to look back over their own history before accusing this government, which has brought in a number of significant measures to increase transparency and to provide information to the community about expenditure, particularly on consultancies.

I note that from 1 July 2008 agencies have been required to report all consultancy contracts via AusTender and the website to which Senator Barnett referred. I commend the minister for this step. This will increase transparency. It will ensure that departments and government agencies will be much more thoughtful about the sorts of consultancies and contracts that they want to let, because they will know that there will be parliamentary and public scrutiny of those contracts that are let. So I certainly commend the minister for introducing that level of transparency, scrutiny and accountability, which will improve their performance on procurement reporting. (Time expired)