Gillman Land Sale

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:55): This is a supplementary, sir. How many other unsolicited bids of which the proponent has indicated that they would not undertake a tender process in those circumstances has the government acceded to?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:55): I don't know the answer to that. I think I have mentioned before in answer to a previous question that there were 38, I think I mentioned, unsolicited bids that we have been entertaining. Some of them have been progressed to the next stage. I don't know how many of those were ones where the proponents said that they would not be interested in pursuing it in an open tender process. But that is not the only consideration. Another consideration might be intellectual property and the message we send to people who would be discouraged.

It is routine for people to say to us, 'If we come up with an idea that we have dreamt up and nobody else has dreamt up and then you share it with everybody for an open tender process, we think that is unfair. Why would we put our time and effort into developing such an idea?' We can't always do that because some ideas aren't unique enough to just quarantine them for a process. It is a question of weighing these things up.

It will be rare I think that we have an unsolicited bid process, but when you consider the many hundreds and thousands of tenders that we run every day through government, in that context it won't be usual, but from time to time we reserve the right to do that in the state's interest, and that is the judgement we made. It is the judgement we made and told the people of South Australia about before the last election. I notice you tried to get it up—

Mr Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —in a certain by-election and it didn't seem to resonate really with the community much there. I think people understand what the government is doing here. They are trying to create jobs. I understand that the proponent actually had a bit of a coffee meeting with the Leader of the Opposition and told him about the plan, and certainly the proponent left that meeting, I think, feeling as though he had the support of the Leader of the Opposition, so I don't quite know what's happened between now and then.