Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In respect of the government response to the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee report on management and assurance of integrity by consulting services, I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I want to start by acknowledging the contribution of particular colleagues that participated in that inquiry, Senators O'Neill and Barbara Pocock. I appreciate that the government has tabled its response to the report, which I think was an important one in the context of the way that government contracts for services across the board. And I do acknowledge that a number of changes have already been made to the processes for contracting that started occurring during the conduct of that inquiry and have continued since, some of that work in response to recommendations of the inquiry. But there are a few things in this government response that I find a little bit concerning.

I'll start with recommendation No. 7. I have to say that I think that the government is either misinterpreting or misrepresenting what the committee said with respect to a central register for conflict-of-interest breaches. There's a lot of discussion in the response with respect to conflicts of interest, and we respect and acknowledge the work that the government has done in relation to managing conflicts of interest and improving processes around declarations of conflicts of interest as contracts are let and education of personnel within various departments to identify and manage those things. But, in my view, a register of breaches of conflicts of interest should be a very small list. The government makes some reference to its work on its code and the 'notice of significant events' clause. It may be that conflicts of interest could be a part of a notice of a significant event. In fact, I would suggest a breach of conflict of interest probably falls in that category.

My view would be that, as long as the guidance around notices for giving notice of a significant event as part of the government's work makes specific reference to a breach of conflict of interest and there is a place where departments can go and that information is publicly visible and visible to other departments, that's the thing that we were seeking to achieve as part of the recommendation that we made. This was not to do a carte blanche across all conflicts of interest. The committee looked at this pretty closely. We recognised that conflicts of interest exist. You can't legislate all conflicts out of existence. But we want to make sure that, where somebody does, as PwC did, commit a major breach of integrity as part of their contract with the government, it's recorded somewhere. The PwC one is probably not the best example because I don't think there are too many people in the system that wouldn't know about it. But, in time, that will fade. I think that the government should consider that element of the intent of the recommendation as part of the work that it continues to do.

With respect to AusTender, I don't know how many witnesses and colleagues came to us complaining about the operation of AusTender. It needs to be functional and it needs to be easy to search. I acknowledge that the government made some changes to functions starting on 1 July last year. I very much appreciate the government's support for recommendation 12, which went through this chamber not long after the inquiry reported. But that actually does create some duplication that could be removed if AusTender worked as we intended it to and recommended that it should out of the inquiry. So I would encourage the government to continue with that work.

We also made a recommendation with respect to the governance of large partnerships. I know that the Treasury has been doing some work in relation to that. There was a very pertinent question asked during the inquiry in relation to why you would change what's there right now. Different people on the committee had different views in relation to this. My concern is that I don't believe that the structure of a large partnership, such as PwC, adequately looked after the interests of all of the partners where the partners are jointly and severally liable for everything that occurs in the organisation. The way that the business was broken up into different elements meant that those that were part of the particular section of the business contracting on this particular tax law or advising on this tax law wouldn't have been aware of what was happening in other parts of the business. So other partners were not appropriately protected. So I would urge continuation of work on that. When you get the response that we got from the then CEO of PwC, Luke Sayers, who had a worse memory lapse than Alan Bond did at his trial with respect to knowing what was going on—the intent is to make sure that people are properly supported.

The last one that I will go to relates to recommendation 11, which was for a committee of the parliament to oversight spending in respect of contracting, particularly for large IT projects. As someone who has been a participant in this place for a long time and a minister who has gone to ERC seeking funding for large IT projects, which are effectively infrastructure—they are public infrastructure—I can say that there is absolutely no parliamentary oversight of that spending in the way that there is with public works.

The government says in its response:

… Recommendation 1 of the Eighty Seventh Annual Report by the Parliamentary Committee on Public Works (tabled 24 March 2024) proposes a thorough review of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, with a view to repealing and replacing the legislation.

We're not talking about getting rid of the public works committee. That committee provided oversight in 2023-24 of something like $3.7 billion of public expenditure. That oversight by the Senate and the House, through the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, is warranted. What that committee does is look at the scope of works and the cost of those works and perform an assessment on value for money. That's the role. It's not, as the government's response intimates, to decide who does or doesn't get a contract. That's quite rightly a department's role. They do that work. This is to provide oversight of the expenditure of public money and to ensure and provide confidence to the parliament and to the Australian community that value for money is being achieved by that work.

Over the same period that I mentioned with respect to the public works committee, 2023-24, there was something like $3.2 billion of funds spent on consultants and major IT projects. There should be public scrutiny of this expenditure to make sure we're getting value for money. That is my point. It's not to do anything more, despite what is indicated in the response by the government. I think the government misrepresents the intent of the recommendation, and I have to say I'm a little bit suspicious, given the lack of transparency of this government, that that might be a motive. I know that others will want to speak on this and some other things, so I will leave it right there. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.