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There are recommendations, which I will not develop in any detail, about proper justification, about demonstrating that they have been properly costed and the like. Yet in this year's program, and I have made reference to this before, in one case a project, not a major one, appeared in the capital works program; it was costed, but the site had not been determined. How can you justify a project for inclusion in the capital works program in September of the fiscal year? How can you justify putting a project in the capital works program with a costing against it when you do not even know when you are going to build it or where you are going to build it?

Mr De Domenico: This is the Monash preschool, is it not?

MR KAINE: I was not going to mention that. But I just mention that as indicative of the lack of justification of a project. My first reaction is: If you do not yet know where you are going to build it, how can you cost it? Secondly, why is it in the program this year? There are some things that get into the program, of course, because they simply have to be included, like the primary school at Ngunnawal. You have to program to build schools to accommodate kids as they come on stream for education. They automatically slide into the program. You expect to find a project like that there. But many of the others that appear in these capital works programs from year to year seem to have no justification in terms of a strategy or a long-term plan to provide the facilities and infrastructure that the Territory needs.

There was another recommendation which we made in the year 1991-92 and which also seems to have been forgotten. That was that projects involving essential maintenance and upgrading - and we referred specifically, for example, to the Adelaide Avenue bus lane reconstruction and the city bus interchange pavement construction - be included in the new works construction program. By and large, these are certainly maintenance projects, but they are very large ones. Until recently, along the Monaro Highway there were a couple of miles dug up. In response to questions, the current Minister gave me some information about the costing. The costing of that project was in excess of $1m. It did not appear in any forward design program. It did not appear in any capital works program, because it was a maintenance project no doubt. But if any other project worth a million dollars were to come up we would require a very comprehensive cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate why it needed to be done.

I wish to raise another matter, but it is not in the same order of cost. Mr De Domenico and I are aware of the fact that half of Drakeford Drive was resurfaced a little while back; and it was done so badly that it had to be stripped off and it is going to have to be redone. At what cost? We do not know, because it is hidden in a maintenance program somewhere. We never do find out what happens with projects of that kind and how they get in there. What is the maintenance program for resurfacing and repairing our roads? I am trying to demonstrate that for years members of this Assembly, through its committees, have been trying to get a cohesive capital works program where everything is justified; where you know what you are doing and why you are doing it; and where you know how much it is going to cost. We are failing.

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