Mr UREN(3.12) —The ministerial statement on Commonwealth public works arose out of the request by the Joint Standing Committee on Public Works and the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure which conducted an examination of alternative delivery systems by Commonwealth public works. Of course, we know that the Expenditure Committee report was tabled in the House last year. I wish to briefly make a few comments in regard to the report. The three recommendations accepted by the Government are welcome in particular, recommendation (1) which deals with information relating to tender prices. As the Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr McVeigh) knows, and would have heard prior to taking over his ministry, there was a great deal of criticism during the last Parliament in relation to the tender prices for the purchase of a computer for his own Department and the manner in which those tenders were carried out. We know that as a result of pressure, both externally and later internally, within his Department the lowest tender and even the tender with the greatest Australian component in the project were not chosen. Therefore, it is important that tender prices be made public and that a section of this Parliament should be able to examine such tenders.

Recommendation (3) deals with contractual projects of management. For instance, in examining the day labour force under the control of the Department of Housing and Construction it can be seen that the number of people employed has actually fallen from 6,592 in 1977-78 to 4,995 in 1978-79. I have no doubt that the Government is very proud of the cuts in the day labour force. What will happen, particularly when contracts are given out to private enterprise? It will be revealed that we certainly can ill afford such drastic labour cuts in the Department particularly in relation to supervision by the Department in policing and making sure the work is done properly. Page 3 of the Minister's statement deals with Commonwealth works expenditure. This is where the real cuts have been made. The situation concerns us because if we look at the report of the Department of Housing and Construction we find that in 1976-77 an amount of $683.6m was made available but in 1979-80 that allocation had been cut to $496.4m. I seek leave to have a table which outlines this position incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The table read as follows-

Appendix H FINANCE

Works Expenditure

($m)

1979-80

1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 (est.)

Civil Departments-

Capital Works 70.1 86.0 88.9 102.9 Furniture and Fittings 5.9 5.7 -(a) -(a) Repairs and Maintenance 78.1 92.1 53.9 64.2 Overseas 15.4 17.8 3.4 3.8 Defence Departments-

Capital Works 69.4 68.5 63.1 76.8 Furniture and Fittings 3.7 5.4 -(a) -(a) Repairs and Maintenance 43.2 49.2 50.4 61.7 Malaysia 1.0 0.9 1.2 1.5 Other-

Telecommunications Commission 88.0 68.3 58.3 66.7 Postal Commission 13.5 13.5 18.0 13.7 Darwin Reconstruction Commission 139.3 89.1 -(b) -(b) National Capital Development Commission 90.5 70.2 42.7 26.0 Reserve and Commonwealth Banks 7.8 7.2 15.5 24.7 Recoverable Works:

Foreign Aid 5.2 8.8 8.3 22.4 Other Governments 5.6 2.7 8.8 2.6 Other 42.3 23.2 19.9 25.2 Sub-Total 679.0 608.6 432.4 492.2 Purchase of Departmental Plant 4.6 4.8 3.5 4.2

Total 683.6 613.4 435.9 496.4

Notes-

(a) Department of Administrative Services assumed operations on 1 July 1978.

(b) Darwin Reconstruction Commission ceased operations on 31 December 1977.

Expenditure on Consultants

($m)

NSW Vic. Qld SA WA Tas. NT ACT CO Total

1976-77 .3 1.6 .1 .1 . . . . 1.2 1.5 .2 5.0 1977-78 .8 3.1 .2 .1 .1 . . .9 2.1 .2 7.5 1978-79 1.5 3.0 .4 .4 .1 .1 .6 1.3 .3 7.7 1979-80 (est.) 1.2 3.0 .5 .2 .2 . . .5 .8 1.1 7.5

The above figures do not include expenditure on consultancies placed and managed by the Department on behalf of Commonwealth agencies and authorities; expenditure was approximately $3m for 1978-79 and estimated to be $3m to $3.5m for 1979-80.

Mr UREN —I thank the House. Those figures demonstrate that public works expenditure, expressed in constant prices, has been cut from $884m in 1976-77 to $496m last year. That is a drop of something like 44 per cent. We can go back still further in respect of the cuts proposed by that violent group of this violent Government which so proudly calls itself the razor gang. Page 29 of its report states:

Expenditure on capital works is an important item in the Commonwealth Budget.

I want to stress that we on this side of the House agree that public works expenditure is an important item of Budget expenditure. But, as I have just pointed out, there has been a cut of 44 per cent since 1976-77. We can now see the philosophy behind why the cut has been made. The razor gang report goes on to state:

With the boom in the private investment associated with resource development there is a need to avoid overstretching the capacity of the building and construction industry. We have accordingly decided on major reductions in this area.

The interesting aspect of this is that since May 1974 there has been a cut in employment in the building and construction industry of over 60,000 people. Today, 60,000 fewer people are working in that industry than were working in it in May 1974. The fact is that this Government is still drastically cutting back a sector of the Budget which is particularly important. We must consider the importance of public works as a whole in the development of our nation. To a great extent it is cutting back in cities and regional areas, particularly in the old, established areas. They are being cut back to a great extent and yet employment is being created in isolated areas which sometimes have difficult social infrastructures and so on. It seems to me that again this is a part of the Government's policy of which we should be highly critical.

The technical aspects of the Minister's statement probably will assist the Parliament to police actions more thoroughly. Certainly I hope that public works carried out, particularly the tendering aspects, will be policed more strictly in the future. I hope the skulduggery that went on-I use the word 'skulduggery' deliberately-in the tendering for a computer for the Minister's own department does not continue. The tendering process was so bad that I believe something was very wrong. I think that there was collusion between certain sections of the bureaucracy and the IBM company to allow that computer to come through. I must say that the Government and the Department will find it extremely difficult to carry out a lot of the supervision on the work that has to be carried out because of the drastic cut which has occurred in day labour.