Chris Steel Press conference CIT corruption
ACT Labor Minister Chris Steel responding to the media on a CIT integrity report.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00And between, was there any sort of contact between December 2021 when your Chief of Staff had the
00:05conversation with Ms Kovach and June 2022 when the news of these contracts emerged?
00:11No, and I wasn't aware of the fifth and sixth contracts that were undertaking these very large
00:19contracts. My office had warned Ms Kovach that it would effectively not meet the pub test to
00:28have any further contracts with Mr Holyworth and his companies. She went ahead and contracted
00:33anyway and it was part of a pattern of dishonesty over a year where she concealed information from
00:41her own board. It's very clear in the findings of the commission that if the board had known
00:48about those large procurements and had also known as well about my concerns, my office's concerns
00:56that have been articulated that they wouldn't have allowed her to go ahead with the contracts.
01:02And you've talked about that you wanted to recover public funds. Are you talking about
01:06her salary or the legal fees or the contract itself with Mr Holyworth?
01:12Well I've asked them for advice in relation to all public funds in relation to this matter and
01:18the options for potentially recovering those funds. So I look forward to receiving their response.
01:25What repercussions could there be from Ms Kovach?
01:29Well the commission has indicated that there's not a matter of criminality. I'm sure if there was
01:35they would have already referred that through to the Australian Federal Police. But a finding of
01:41corruption is very serious. This is the first finding of corruption that I'm aware of that has
01:47been made by the integrity commission and it sends a very strong message through to all senior
01:53executives in the public service and statutory authorities that they have to uphold the high
01:59expectations that we as ministers and the community has of them that they will use public
02:04funds efficiently and effectively that they'll comply with the procurement rules.
02:08What has changed in the relationships since that time to now between ministers and CEOs
02:16and statutory authorities and the way tenders and contracts are done?
02:22There was an investigation by the Auditor-General when I became aware of the six and very large
02:28contract. I referred that matter through to the Auditor-General. The integrity commission also
02:36undertaking an inquiry that was unbeknownst to me at that point in time and the Auditor-General
02:40then looked into the matter. They made a series of recommendations about improvements that could
02:46be made to the Government Procurement Act. We've since made those through the Legislative Assembly
02:52enacting the recommendations and one of the key features of that process...
02:57Frustrating. You have this hanging over your head. The CITs have been hanging over it for years now.
03:04It's bitterly frustrating and disappointing for me as minister. It's clear from the findings
03:12that this has affected CITs reputation badly. It's affected their finances in terms of the
03:19funds that have been spent. That has not resulted in any tangible outcome for students or the economy
03:29but I am positive about CITs future because they've undertaken significant reform.
03:36The Board under the new Chair Kate Lundy has put in place a range of financial controls to
03:42better manage these types of issues in the future but also she's focused and the Board of Boards
03:50focus CIT on delivering their core business which is to deliver high quality training to students
03:57and to support skills needs in industry. They're developing a new strategy at the moment for the
04:04Canberra Institute of Technology which will be different to the strategy pursued by the former
04:09CEO and I'm really confident that that will be focusing on the right things.
04:14So it's positive news ahead for CIT and I'd much rather be talking about the work that we're doing
04:21to propose a new Centre of Excellence at CIT working with the Canberra Cyber Hub to support
04:27cyber security skills needs in the economy which is something that I announced last week
04:32rather than talking about the dishonest actions, the corrupt, seriously corrupt actions of the
04:38former CEO. So just to clarify that Strategic Compass 2020 Evolving Together program has been
04:43completely scrapped. A new strategy has been developed working in consultation with staff,
04:50students and industry which will be better focused on delivering high quality training on the core
04:55business that CIT should be focusing on as well as looking at the opportunities for renewal of
05:01some of their campuses as well to provide better learning environments for students and we've of
05:05course put some money already in the budget there looking at Future Energy Skills Hub in Fishwick.
05:11We're doing the work at CIT widened as well but we're putting forward Centre of Excellence
05:16proposals as well so that CIT can continue to lead not just here in the ACT in terms of
05:21vocational education but right around the country when it comes to electric vehicles or cyber
05:26security. So I think they're in a much better place and a completely new executive team has
05:32been put in place at Canberra Institute of Technology. It's a larger team and what that
05:37reflects is that capability has been brought into the organisation so that they don't have to rely
05:44on external contractors in order to get work done. I think that's a probably good lesson for
05:50a range of different agencies across government. We've seen some of the issues that have come up
05:56with major consultancies to government over recent years particularly in the federal government
06:01where our focus will be on building capability within the Canberra
06:05Institute of Technology so they can better support staff and students.