Letting of Contracts at Central TAFE Public Hearing AM session

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13/26/glj So what did you do?---I took him in to see Bryan - I think it was Bryan Nicholson, I think Bryan was in the chair at the time - and said to Bryan, "Mervyn has come to see me about trying to employ Arwa as a casual. I think it would be better if we went through a procurement process" - I mean, this may not be word for word but it was along the lines of this - "and I'd like you to put a procurement process in place." I also had an arrangement with Bryan at that time to identify priorities for him because he was very snowed under, they had a - they a significant backlog of work in the procurement area, and I asked him to elevate it to be a high priority otherwise it would have gone to the bottom of the tray and probably take him, you know, two or three months to get to finalisation. So I left Mervyn with Bryan and, yeah, in terms of that component of it I - I had no other involvement. Did you ever speak to Joseph Rooney about the matter? ---The - my recollection is that he sent an email to Cindy Corless who was doing my substantive role. All right, I'm not talking about that?---Okay. We can move on to that later, but Joseph Rooney says that you approached him in Phil Bianchi's office and said that "Mervyn has this project" and you had a discussion about it and he said, "Okay, I'll put the documents together, we'll put it out to a public tender and we'll do it that way," and then you said something along the lines of, "We're going to write the contract with shared services." Did you say that to him?---No. Not at all. Why would I? I mean, I was reliant on the procurement guys putting the process in place. I - there was no need for me to say that. Did Joseph Rooney ever approach you in person to speak to you about the problems he was having with this contract that he was writing for Mervyn Joseph?---Not that I can recall. Did you ever have discussions about the concerns that Joseph Rooney had with Phil Bianchi?---I'm not sure what you mean. Concerns? With Phil Bianchi? Did Phil Bianchi ever come to you, either with Joseph Rooney present or not, and discuss Joseph Rooney's concerns about Mervyn's project with you?---I don't recall them doing that. Did Phil May ever come and talk to you about the problems that he and Joseph Rooney were having with the project, Mervyn's project?---Not that I can recall. I mean, I don't recall them coming to me and specifically saying, "I am having these problems." I mean, we were having lots of procurement problems at that time and no-one was - that I'm aware of - specifically pointing out to me personally that 4/10/06 MUSSON, S.D. XN 196 11.02 Spark & Cannon
13/27/glj there was some issues. I found out later. Is that via that email that was sent to Cindy Corless? ---Yes. Yes. All right, I will show that to you now - it's CCC bar code 9393. This is an email from Joseph Rooney to Cindy Corless dated 22 October 2003. It's about RFQ079/2003, consulting services for the student journey project?---Yes. It's an email where Joseph Rooney outlines a number of concerns that he had. Did Cindy Corless forward that email to you?---Yes, we had a discussion about it. Did she forward the email to you and then you had a discussion? Is that the position?---Yeah, I suspect that's what has happened, yes, or she brought it; she'd printed it and brought it to me. One or the other, yeah. What did you do in response to the concerns raised by Joseph Rooney in that email?---If it's - I haven't read the whole email. Cindy and I had a discussion about it and we were - we were struggling to sort of understand what the issue was. So my recollection is I asked her to go back and talk to Joe and ask the sort of straight-out question, was there any sort of jiggery-pokery going on here, and I think she came back to me and said, "Well, Joe thinks it's all about perception, you know, what people will think," that there wasn't necessarily - in terms of our own policies and that, there wasn't any breach of that but it was the perception of what people would think. We then had a discussion about, "Well, given that it's past, what are we going to do?" and we - I mean, we had significant problems in the procurement area which I undertook to fix when I came into the role of director business support and Cindy and I believed that at that stage there was nothing we could do about the past, and this was probably fairly typical of things that - some of the problems that were occurring with procurement, and that for the future we had a decent plan in place so these things would not happen in the future. We'd recruited someone that came from State Supply that understood all the policies and guidelines. We'd added in extra staff in the procurement area, which had been really under-resourced, and we'd made sure the new person was going out and working with managers in a proactive way to make sure that these sort of things didn't occur and that if there were any problems we'd cut them off before they actually became, you know, the sort of problems that were occurring. So we both came to the conclusion that it's unlikely that this sort of thing would happen again in the future. Joe had basically told us that there wasn't anything that wasn't following the normal processes, or that was my interpretation of what Cindy had told me, and that that would be the way forward, that we would rely for the future on good systems and consulting sort of approaches to try and deal with some of these problems that 4/10/06 MUSSON, S.D. XN 197 Spark & Cannon
Page 1 and 2: Copyright in this document is reser
Page 3 and 4: 1/3/rds And then you add 20 per cen
Page 5 and 6: 2/5/glj So there has been noncompli
Page 7 and 8: 3/7/mjd Didn't Gary Fitzgerald come
Page 9 and 10: 4/9/rds there was, you know, the pr
Page 11 and 12: 5/11/mjd the originating email it's
Page 13 and 14: 6/13/glj You were on corporate exec
Page 15 and 16: 7/15/rds they were fully aware of t
Page 17 and 18: 8/17/mjd Going forward Central TAFE
Page 19 and 20: 9/19/glj No, but as a proposition,
Page 21 and 22: 10/21/mjd someone on a casual basis
Page 23 and 24: 11/23/rds but if she has breaks in
Page 25: 12/25/mjd that you go through." Why
Page 29 and 30: 14/29/rds Are you aware that one of
Page 31 and 32: 15/31/mjd say that. Well, if you ha
Page 33 and 34: 16/33/rds THE COMMISSIONER: commenc
Page 35 and 36: 17/35/glj Now, did you sign a confi
Page 37 and 38: 18/37/mjd There's no doubt in your
Page 39 and 40: 19/39/rds I think I understand. Cou
Page 41 and 42: 20/41/glj But you think that they g
Page 43 and 44: 20/43/glj staff and it was starting
Page 45 and 46: 21/45/mjd Central TAFE. Is that cor
Page 47 and 48: 22/47/rds How did you know it was g
Page 49 and 50: 23/49/glj Why did you tell him it c
Page 51 and 52: 24/51/mjd Now, this is an email fro
Page 53 and 54: 25/53/rds Did she explain why she c
Page 55 and 56: 26/55/glj Well, you are right and I
Page 57 and 58: 27/57/mjd So you put this together,
Page 59 and 60: 28/59/mjd Yes, I'm not criticising
Page 61 and 62: 29/61/glj Was there ever an evaluat
Page 63 and 64: 30/63/rds I want to show you the do
Page 65 and 66: 31/65/rds We will go to the letter
Page 67 and 68: 32/67/mjd Do you know why full cont

Letting of Contracts at Central TAFE Public Hearing AM session

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