WA NEWS

The WA Treasury, as part of its broader procurement reform agenda released a proposed Debarment Regime for consultation. The regime would give the government the power to debar suppliers for between two and five years. This is a novel approach for Australia – no other state or territory has introduced such a scheme. We have made a submission on the regime stressing the concerns we have in relation to suspension during an investigation and a lack of clarity on review rights. We have also raised how potentially the application of the regime to ‘affiliates’ (defined broadly within the proposed regime) might capture the commercial arrangements consultants are part of on major infrastructure projects (such as join ventures and alliancing).

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In June 2020, Consult Australia participated in the WA Government's COVID-19 Recovery Housing & Construction Ministerial Roundtable to discuss the impacts of the pandemic and ways to support the state's recovery. The roundtable engagement has been summarised by the government in a Summary Report with a number of the ideas being incorporated into the WA Recovery Plan.

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Infrastructure WA has released their Stronger Tomorrow Discussion Paper on the development of a 20-year Infrastructure Strategy for Western Australia. The Strategy will inform future priorities and planning undertaken by state government agencies and government trading enterprises. The Strategy will focus on both infrastructure projects and programs as well as non-build solutions such as policy, regulatory, pricing, technology, procurement, skills and governance. Feedback on the discussion paper should be provided to Diane Dowdell by 7 August. 

Consult Australia will be running a dedicated consultation session with key members of Infrastructure WA to harness feedback and comment from our members and engage directly with key staff who are developing the Strategy. This event will be published very soon on our events page. 

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The WA Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety has released a consultation paper proposing changes to the Building Services (Registration) Act 2011 to allow for the registration of building engineers and to introduce a code of conduct for engineers. Consistent with our advocacy in other states and territories, Consult Australia will be pushing for a consistent national approach to registration to reduce the burden on members working across jurisdictions. We are in discussions with the Australian Build Codes Board's BCR Framework Implementation Team that is looking to develop a national approach. We are also meeting with the federal Deregulation Taskforce noting their focus on occupational mobility.

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