Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Government contracts

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn – Leader of the Opposition) (14:15): My question is to the Premier. Ahead of the 2018 election the government promised to reduce spending on consultants. The Auditor-General has found that spending actually increased by 47 per cent, with a total spend of $11.6 billion on contractors and consultants. Why can’t the government manage taxpayers money?

Darren Cheeseman interjected.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for South Barwon can leave the chamber for half an hour.

Member for South Barwon withdrew from chamber.

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:15): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. In the Leader of the Opposition’s question he went back in time to 2018. In 2018 there were, as he pointed out, a range of commitments that were made to the Victorian community. I remember some made commitments at the 2018 election and the 2022 election to bring back the east–west link project, but that is for them to have made those commitments.

We did make that commitment in relation to what the Leader of the Opposition has referred to, but I point to a couple of significant events that required the government to make additional investments to support the Victorian community. The first of those was the horrific fires that tore through particularly the eastern part of the state in that Black Summer period of late 2019 and into 2020, and in terms of marshalling the resources alongside the tremendous work that our emergency services did in terms of responding to that immediate fire threat, we needed to make additional investments to support the recovery and the rebuilding effort for the local community. And yes, some of that did require the investment from people with particular expertise outside of government; hence, as that information is collected through the Auditor-General’s process, that is captured under the category of contractors and consultants, because those contractors, for example, had to be engaged to do that giant clean-up effort that was required, particularly for places like Mallacoota that were just devastated as a result of those fires. We know from previous experience that if you can get in there and move quickly on those clean-up efforts, yes, that does mean you need to engage outside contractors to do that work. That is just one example of additional – you may call it an expense, but we describe it as supporting the community with their rebuilding and recovery effort.

As we all know, in February–March 2020 we had to move quickly and rapidly to support our community in terms of at that time the emergence of the COVID virus, and then over the following years we also needed to employ an additional range of measures to support the Victorian community – and yes, again, that did require the signing of contracts for additional PPE that needed to come into our health system. I hope that provides the information for the Leader of the Opposition.

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn – Leader of the Opposition) (14:18): The Auditor-General reported that there was a lack of transparency on reporting on contractors and consultants and the government did not properly report on expenditure. Why is the government trying to hide the true cost of its waste and mismanagement of Victorian taxpayers money?

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:19): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question, and in asking his question he obviously did not get to the bit of the report that indicated that the government is considering all of these recommendations. And whether it is through the annual reporting processes or through the budget and budget updates or through the work that the Auditor-General does, of course we will continue to work hard to provide this information. But again – I go back to the points I was making earlier – from time to time government will need to engage with contractors. We will need to engage external expert advice, particularly when it is in times of responding to natural disasters or responding to health pandemics. We also from time to time engage expert advice to make sure that we can build big and important infrastructure projects in transport infrastructure and in health infrastructure, and that work will continue.