The Special Minister for State, Chris Steel made several admissions surrounding the abandoned $78 million Human Resource Information Management System (HRIMS) program in Budget Estimates hearings today.

Responding to questions from Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Peter Cain, the Minister admitted that he did not know the cost of decommissioning HRIMS or the cost of the new Payroll Capability-Human Resource Management (PC-HRM) program, and that he oversaw $626,000 wasted on the termination of an IT service contract that was never even deployed.

“Since 2017, this Labor-Greens government have blown tens of millions of ACT taxpayer dollars on questionable contracts and incompetent public administration,” Mr Cain said.

“The Minister has once again demonstrated that he is not fit to lead or appropriately administer these types of projects. His failures with HRIMS appear to be continuing to the next iteration.

“The new PC-HRM program has all the hallmarks of repeating the mistakes of its predecessor. The Minister has already announced delays to parts of ‘HRIMS 2.0’ and seems to have no idea about its costs.

“If the Minister cannot disclose how much the ‘HRIMS 2.0’ replacement is going cost, or even provide an estimate, then how can we be expected to believe that the Minister and relevant officials have genuinely learnt from the previous program?

“The Minister also needs to explain how he wasted $626,000 on terminating a contract with an IT service that was not even deployed or utilised.

“The Canberra Liberals are seriously concerned this incompetent Minister will continue to waste millions in public monies.

“The risk of this Minister overseeing yet another failure of public administration appears high,” Mr Cain concluded.