HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-18 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

Grievance Debate

ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:21): Today we had the extraordinary revelation from the government—in particular minister Hill, followed by the Treasurer—that the working files (particularly in electronic form) for the new build of the Royal Adelaide Hospital proposed at the railway site have disappeared. We were told they were in the form of a USB flash drive and were last in the possession of an employee of the Department of Health's major projects office.

We heard from minister Hill today that that occurred on 2 June and that, later that day, the employee informed his employer in that unit. We also heard that the SA health department and the department of treasury were informed the following day, and I take that to be the senior people in those departments. We then heard that the Treasurer and the Minister for Health were informed by their departments nine days later. That, in itself, is an extraordinary delay, but I will come back to it.

The minister further advised the house that the matter was so serious and that he and/or the Treasurer's office have reported the matter to the police and to the Crown Solicitor's Office and that the government has apprised the external probity advisers—it is getting serious. We also heard that the security protocols that were in place have now been tightened from whatever they were before to what they are now—we do not know.

This situation is so serious that the government has ordered a review to be undertaken of the breach (presumably the loss of the item which contains all of this sensitive material) by the Crown Solicitor's Office—to quote Minister Hill:

...to establish whether additional revised protocols and procedures are required to minimise the risk of such an event occurring in the future.

The minister also advised us that the situation is so serious, members of parliament, that the Treasurer has also been consulted about whether this will compromise the current expressions of interest as the precursor to a tender process for the biggest single infrastructure project by this government, at $1.7 billion, coupled with nearly $2 billion in clean-up, rail yard site rehabilitation and relocation of the existing services, namely the rail yards on it.

This is how serious the situation is, yet when the government was asked today why it was not told for nine days, rather than give the parliament some explanation, the Treasurer stood up and said, 'That is why we are having a review. We have this matter being looked into.' What utter rot. The government is having a review of what went wrong when a member of the department lost this particular item containing this sensitive material.

There is no mention in minister Hill's ministerial statement about a review into why the two senior ministers for the Department of Health and the Treasury were then not told for nine days. The whole parliament and, therefore, the whole of South Australia is still in the dark as to why we were not told until today. Slipped into question time was the ministerial statement on the last day of the parliament, when both ministers—the Treasurer and minister Hill—knew this last Friday. Not a word.

We have had two days in this parliament, with question time and debates, during which time there has been much discussion about the expressions of interest procedure, the site, the development of the tender process and whether or not the whole project will go ahead. There was not a word from either the Treasurer or the Minister for Health about what has being going on. Well, we need to know some answers. We need to know about the level of sensitivity of the material on the documents. For example, if public sector factors are disclosed on this material and get out to the general population, will they contaminate or corrupt in any way the validity of that process? Was there password protector on that USB? We need to know.

Time expired.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT