Government Procurement Process Slammed

The Auditor General has, in a report to Parliament, slammed the Procurement Process of Government and has demonstrated that the complaints made by business to Government are justified. Among the findings, the Auditor General discovered a tender that was inaccurate by 3,500%. The report revealed that of a sample of tenders that did not go through to completion 60% were not reissued.

"Small wonder business is frustrated by Government,” Jodeen Carney said today.

"According to the Auditor General, it takes an average of 110 days to get from its initiating process to the awarding of the contract.

"It costs business a bomb to try and comply with these tenders and that effort is often wasted because the Government has lost control of the tender process. Every day business people complain to me about the process but what the Auditor General has found would even surprise business in terms of inefficiency and waste.

"The Auditor General also identified an enormous disconnect between many Government agencies and the market place. Simply expressed, agencies are not in touch with the market places from where they're trying to obtain goods and services.

"This Government says it supports business but these findings demonstrate that bureaucracy reigns supreme.

"Government is the largest single purchaser of goods and services in the Territory. It has now been demonstrated to be so inefficient that it cannot be seriously relied upon for effective processing of work.

"The Treasurer, the person who has carriage of Procurement, has had his eye off the ball again. This has happened on his watch and Territory businesses suffer while he remains distracted.

"The Government needs to focus on its core businesses rather than its speculative and non-essential functions like property developments and propaganda. Once it has the fundamentals right, then it can look at other things. Currently even the fundamentals are beyond them,” Ms Carney said.

2006-08-22