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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1340 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

the number of questions in connection with which the Chief Minister has actually produced any information. She is very adept at avoiding answering questions. There is no doubt that the reason why she has avoided all of the questions on this is simply that the project is out of control and the Chief Minister does not have the courage to come in here and admit it and tell the community how much it is ultimately going to cost them.

It is about time we had the facts on the table. I support Mr Stanhope's proposal. However, I do not think it goes far enough, and I will shortly move an amendment to add some information that I would like to see, information which Mr Stanhope inadvertently, I am sure, omitted. As I have said, it has been almost impossible to find out what the emerging costs of this project have been. Even today, the figure of $30.6m, which is the latest one we have heard, is totally uncertain. Nobody in this place, I will guarantee, even perhaps including the Chief Minister, knows what the final cost of that project to the community is going to be. The Chief Minister, over a period of months, has avoided answering the question as to what the emerging cost has been - and the Chief Minister says this is transparent.

I have been getting information from a number of sources over recent months that suggests to me that the actual construction cost of this project is in excess of $32.6m; that it is closer to $35m. Maybe the Chief Minister would care to comment on that. But, of course, that is not the total cost. The Chief Minister herself told us that she is embarking on a 15-year borrowing program to finance this thing. What is the interest on that going to be? Is that going to be added to the final cost of this edifice to Ms Kate Carnell? The Chief Minister will avoid telling us as long as she can even what the amount of money is to be borrowed - and we still do not know what that is - how much the interest rate is and what the 15-year cost of all of that is going to be.

There is another little interesting aside to this. One of the costs emerging from the Bruce Stadium is the cost of making provisions for Australian rules football. Is there not an $8m provision in the system to upgrade or create facilities for AFL? Because they were excluded from Bruce Stadium, is this not, therefore, an additional cost on the Bruce Stadium project cost? The Chief Minister will avoid dealing with that issue as long as she can.

What is the total cost? If the Chief Minister says this is so transparent, let her today tell us what the total cost of this project to the taxpayer is going to be. Do not give me this $12.3m garbage. That myth was destroyed months ago. The total cost, the total risk, is now falling on the taxpayer, with the Chief Minister financing the entire program by borrowings, which are a risk to the taxpayer. The $12.3m is rubbish. If she has the courage, let her here and now, today, tell us what the total cost of that project is going to be. She will not. She has been avoiding that question for months.

The financing arrangements have been deliberately obscured. We do not yet know even the details of these transactions with the Commonwealth Bank. We do know that there was a $9m borrowing on 30 June last year which was repaid on 1 July. Why? That was borrowed because when the Auditor-General had a look at the books for the year he found that if that transaction had not been put through the books there would have been

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