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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-02-15 Daily Xml
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Question Time

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN TRAVEL CENTRE

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): I seek leave to make an explanation before asking the Minister for Tourism a question about the visitor information centre.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: In what the tourist industry, a major $4 billion a year enterprise in this state, regards as a dumb and illogical move, the government moved a popular, well-sited visitor information centre from its highly visible King William Street location to an underground bunker in Grenfell Street. The building in Grenfell Street was owned by a man known as Bob Foord.

The move from the new building to the old, and the outsourcing of the tourism information visitor centre to a private company, was initiated by the then chair of the South Australian Tourism Commission, who is also called Bob Foord; they are one and the same gentleman. It gets more interesting. The Grenfell Street premises were run by a company called Holidays of Australia. Mr Foord has a family connection with this company through his son-in-law, Mr Ben Mead. When all of this inconvenient truth came out, Mr Foord denied any wrongdoing.

It next emerged that Mr Foord had reorganised his business-cum-family affairs so that his son-in-law, who had been chief executive of the Foord's Proud Australia company, became the chief of Holidays of Australia. Mr Foord then stretched my imagination by claiming the deal had been, and I quote, 'handled with great probity. I did not know as chairman that my son-in-law was even bidding'.

On 22 June 2011, the Deputy Premier and then tourism minister, the Hon. John Rau, announced an inquiry. Mr Rau said that it would be probed by the Auditor-General. On 26 July 2011, Bob Foord tendered his resignation to John Rau, still denying any wrongdoing and claiming the successful outsourcing of the travel centre would be 'hindered' if he remained as chairman. The results of that investigation have never been released. There has been no announcement from Mr Rau or the current minister that the inquiry has been completed, what it found and what it has recommended. My questions to the minister are:

1. How long does it take to conduct an investigation?

2. Is eight months long enough?

3. If it is, why has the inquiry not released its findings?

4. Have you seen the results of the inquiry?

5. Will you now do the decent thing and share that with us?

6. Do you repudiate Mr Weatherill's mantra for open and transparent government?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the Status of Women) (14:26): I thank the honourable member for his important questions. From 1 July 2011, Holidays of Australia, an existing holiday travel business which packaged South Australian and Australian holidays, commenced a licensing agreement to also operate the South Australian Travel Centre. The Travel Centre answers inquiries and facilitates travel bookings for walk-in visitors and consumers who telephone. The Travel Centre also responds to various inquiries and bookings generated by SATC's website.

The decision to relocate this service to HOA was part of the budgetary savings measures put forward by Tourism. As we know, savings were required to be made across all agencies, and Tourism was required to contribute its share of those savings. This was a strategy where they believed that locating the service to an existing holiday service and expanding that to provide the broader statewide services was a good option.

A tender process was conducted by the chief executive and the tender that won that outcome was, as we know, Holidays of Australia. I understand that SATC undertook the tender process and made the assessments at that time. It then came to light that Mr Foord was a board member and at the time—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: He was the chairman: he wasn't a board member.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: He was the chair, I should say, of the SATC board at the time. He took it upon himself to resign. He was not asked to, but he believed it was in the best interests at that time to stand down. At the time I believe the Attorney-General, then minister for tourism, referred the matter to the Auditor-General for investigation, and I am advised that the Auditor-General is yet to report to the commission.

However, the previous minister for tourism referred the circumstances surrounding the grant of the licence to the Crown, as well as the processes that were used. The Crown has investigated the Travel Centre matter, and I have seen that advice. I have also received advice from the agency and, as I indicated yesterday, had a number of meetings with members.

Obviously I considered that advice very carefully, and my conclusion is that I believe a very sound, structured process was followed. However, some deficits—mainly administrative—were found, and I have since written to the SATC board asking it to ensure that certain processes and issues were addressed. Amongst the issues I asked it to address were the adequacy of the induction program for board members; ensuring board processes and regular maintenance of a conflicts register; adherence to contracting processes, including statutory government processes to execute documents and authorisations; and also adequacy of communication lines between commission employees and management.

I have sent that correspondence, and I have since met with both the current chair of the board and the chief executive and been advised that these matters are well on the way to being resolved. I am absolutely assured that, regarding the matters that led to the situation of the chair hearing a recommendation from the chief executive about a tender process that involved a family member, those administrative matters that needed tightening up have been tightened up. As I said, those problems are well on the way to being addressed.

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