Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The rules that the public sector has to operate under for these particular types of contracts are very overt in their statement that they are not allowed to use this rule in order to be able to do anything apart from something that would be in the benefit of the contract on the basis that it's a small-sized tender. So I think we may be arguing at cross purposes to some degree here. Your suggestion, we're saying, is that there is a balance being determined here, on the basis of good business sense, speed and efficiency but with a set of rules around it that overtly say you cannot do this in order to evade any level of scrutiny. So I suppose we can discuss this for some time, but I think we may have to agree to disagree, on the basis that we believe that the rules put in place the kinds of protections that we think are appropriate and relevant for the type of contract that we're talking about. I suppose that's the position of the government in relation to this particular matter.