Page 1759 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2022
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clearer to the community and stakeholders what benefits the project is intended to deliver, and it will do so in quite a practical way.
It will set indicators and targets against benefits so that progress can be tracked over time and so that we can check it. It will keep government agencies and stakeholders focused on the delivery of those benefits. That is important, because these projects have a really long lead time and it takes a long time to realise them. They need a lot of ongoing effort. We need to monitor and check that we are getting what we thought we were getting.
An awful lot of other transparency measures apply to this project and to most projects here. We can all ask questions in the Assembly about this project. Mr Parton asks a lot of questions, which is really good to see. I asked questions last week. I asked questions during question time, and I have lodged some more questions about light rail on notice. I think it is good that we use those tools and that we do get the information that we want and the information that our communities are asking for.
I am a really passionate advocate for the utmost transparency and for the proactive disclosure of documents. It is good to see that we get those documents released proactively whenever we can and that we continue to ask questions and get as much openness as we can have about a commercial project that is underway.
This project is also open to the committee review process. The Auditor-General’s report into stage 2A is currently being inquired into by the public accounts committee, on which the Canberra Liberals, ACT Labor and ACT Greens all have members. I am looking forward to seeing the outcome of that committee review. Committees are another key strand of our scrutiny, and of the scrutiny of government work, and it is important that we inquire into and take note of those committee inquiries.
It is also worth noting that some governments are much less transparent. We have noticed that the New South Wales Liberal government have not made public the business case for their rail projects. They have not published their business cases at all. We have published the business cases for light rail stages 1 and 2A, and we are expecting both business cases to continue to be published. We are expecting the benefits realisation plans to be published. We are expecting transparency on all of those.
Scrutiny and transparency are essential in making sure that government is accountable, and they are essential to ensuring that we can trust our political system. I think that our best decisions are informed by that level of scrutiny. Our best questions often come from an informed populace, and it would be a mistake for any government to assume that it had all of the answers. That is why I will certainly continue asking public questions about this project and I will continue monitoring it. I am pleased to see that Mr Parton will clearly be monitoring it as well.
The ACT Greens went to the election with these values clearly detailed in our policy platform. We want our infrastructure projects to be accountable, transparent and subject to quality public engagement for their whole duration. We want the publication of documents, wherever that can be done. We want the publication of
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