Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise today to speak on the 89th annual report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works. I'd like to start by acknowledging our chair, the member for Makin, Mr Tony Zappia, and thank him for his diligence, hard work, professionalism and leadership through this committee. I would also like to acknowledge the chair from the 47th Parliament, former member for Moreton Graham Perrett, and the deputy chair from the 47th Parliament, former member for Hinkler the Hon. Keith Pitt. And I thank committee members from the 47th Parliament and the 48th Parliament.

I'd also like to thank the hardworking staff: Jeff Norris, our committee secretary; Danton Leary, our inquiry secretary; Liana Leilua, our senior researcher; Grace Cremen, our researcher; and Tanya Pratt, our office manager. These folks go above and beyond. They look after us. The quality of information that we get from them, in the research that they do, is second to none. Tanya Pratt, from the office, makes sure we're all in the right place at the right time, and we do a bit of travel with this. I thank them all very much for everything they do.

The chair has described eloquently the number of referrals and the amount of money that's involved in what comes through our committee, so I won't reprosecute that. It's very high. But I would like to brief the parliament on some of the scrutiny that we have undertaken as part of our work.

One of these things is cost. We've had a really good look at the cost per square metre for works in the private sector and in the public sector, and we've done some analysis of how that works. When you have a detention centre, compared to an office building in Canberra, obviously the fit-out costs are very high, but we can use some of our research and our expertise to see how they compare to make sure that we're getting the best bang for our buck.

The committee also expects to receive proposed works projects with a P80 level of confidence, which some of the projects previously have not had. It's been clearly shown that, when you have a project that has been costed to P80—so 80 per cent confidence that the price will be correct—you get a better outcome. The better the design, the costing and the work that's done upfront, the fewer the blowouts further down the track.

As the chair rightly spoke about earlier, the committee has observed an increase relating to consultants, both in the number of consultants being used and in the amount that consultants are charging for projects. What we want to see is the money going into the bricks and mortar of the fit-out—things that are actually tangible—not just being spent on consultants. Moving forward, we're going to put those consultants right under the microscope. We believe that the scrutiny is very important for this, and we want to make sure that we get the best bang for our buck.

All in all, I believe that the public works committee is working and functioning very well. We are applying a lot of pressure to the people who are bringing projects forward, to make sure that the Australian taxpayer gets the best value for money. I commend the report to the House.

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