Page 460 - Week 02 - Thursday, 3 March 1994
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Mr Kaine: Read the rest of the paragraph.
MR MOORE: I am just choosing parts, but I am also attempting to do it as fairly as I can. They go on:
We are, however, satisfied that we have been able to address the major issues adequately and that further investigation is unlikely to alter the conclusions of this report.
On page 4 they go on to talk about methodological issues, as follows:
There can also be very wide variations in the infrastructure costs in urban consolidation projects.
So, looking at the information they have available, they recognise that the figures they are using are subject to wide variation. If there were some reason for anybody to wish to favour one view rather than the other, the information that would be provided would take advantage of that variation. In this case, I think it is important to read the report, as they suggest, in the context of the Planning Committee's report. As part of the methodological issues, they go on in the second dot point to say:
. In some cases the unused capacity may be whittled away by changes in engineering and environmental standards ...
One of the issues that this Assembly, perhaps through one of its committees, ought to be looking at is the notion that we always operate to specific engineering standards and we allow the engineers to say, "That is the standard; therefore we have to go to that extent". This is an area where we do not seem to have much control over money. The standards of roads, for example, and how they are built, the standard of concrete that is used in a roundabout, are all set by Australian Standards. I am given to understand, after talking to a number of engineers, that many States do not build such things to Australian Standards but justify going to a lower standard on a cost-benefit analysis.
It is worth taking into account that over the very long period - and the period is set out in the graph on page 13 - when the profits start to occur, which is in the seventh year, that may be significantly whittled away by changing engineering standards. The third dot point on page 4 says:
. If capacity constraints and bottlenecks are encountered, the cost of rectification can be very high in some cases.
That is one area where Access Economics has a very strange way of dealing with this situation. They say, "Yes, if there are problems they can be very expensive to resolve, particularly bottlenecks". In dealing with that, you then go to 2.8, and their way of dealing with it is to say that people and institutions adapt. That same argument was certainly not accepted by Justice Kelly in his findings on the Canberra Times site when he looked at the impact of traffic on Civic and the development of office blocks. They are two entirely different things. I am not trying to suggest that they are not, but the same style of argument, that people in institutions adapt, was certainly not acceptable to Justice Kelly, nor do I think it should be acceptable to members of this Assembly.
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