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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (20 April) . . Page.. 952 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

If we do not have that assessment ability in-house, the overall costings of the Government's capital works program are going to be run out of control very quickly. If you do not know whether the quality of advice you are getting is good, you do not know whether or not you are getting the best value for money, and that is what this program is meant to be all about. We have made a very significant recommendation, and that is that the Government needs to investigate the re-establishment within the Department of Urban Services of the former Works and Services Group, a group of people dedicated within the government department to assessing the costs and technical aspects of projects so that ACT ratepayers get value for money. That is a very significant recommendation.

Another recommendation I want to draw attention to is in relation to an area just out there, Civic Square. We were very surprised to learn that after the redevelopment of Civic Square had taken place - over the past 12 months we all observed the work that has gone on out there in Civic Square - all of a sudden the Government was proposing to spend more money on refurbishing the square. This project is expected to cost, in total, $765,000, and there is a proposal for an expenditure of a further $200,000 for Civic Square development, including the potential to bring colour and activity and life to the square. Improvements may include some grassed areas to soften the square, a stage, a floral display and street furniture.

The question that the committee had to ask was: "Why wasn't that done when you were digging it up six months ago? Why wasn't it all done at the same time? Surely that would be more cost effective". The answer we received was: "Well, this was a different government agency asking for the money". Before it was the Department of Urban Services; now it is the Cultural Facilities Corporation. Now, the corporation has responsibility for the square. Well, that makes sense, does it not?

I thought when Civic Square was being upgraded that the whole point was to bring more colour and life and people into the square. I thought that was what we were doing, Mr Speaker. But no, it seems we need to spend another $200,000 to do it. Mr Speaker, the committee makes the very sensible recommendation: "That all planning for capital works should reflect careful assessment of how the particular work will be used in practice". You would think that just a little bit of general forward design and planning would solve these problems. Then, perhaps, we might have money for important projects like the technology upgrade at Hawker College.

Mr Speaker, I am sure my colleagues will want to raise a number of other issues, so I will conclude with one final point. That relates, Mr Speaker, to planning for the Belconnen Town Centre. The Belconnen Town Centre is facing, at this stage, perhaps the most significant redevelopment since it was first constructed. We found, through the capital works program, that, instead of a coordinated planning approach being adopted to how we could make the Belconnen Town Centre a more livable and human place, in terms of the scale and design, there was again the repetition of ill-coordinated, sloppy planning that has occurred at Belconnen, really, since self-government and prior to self-government.

Here is this amazing opportunity. The Commonwealth is redeveloping two significant office blocks in the Belconnen Town Centre and the ACT Government is talking about relocating or changing the structure of the Belconnen bus interchange. Yet there is

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