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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3634 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

As an individual within the ALP, I do not know enough about technology to embrace this and shout from the rooftops that it will be a grand saviour or grand fillip to Canberra, but from what I have seen it sounds good. From what I have seen written by commentators who do purport to know a fair bit more than I do, it sounds good. We would certainly like to see the ACT continue to implement good ideas, but the implementation of good ideas is no licence to spend unlimited public funds without reference to the parliament.

I think the public accounts committee has acted appropriately. I think that virtually all the members in this Assembly have acted appropriately, other than, I think, the Chief Minister who put a few words in my mouth yesterday that I did not utter. I thought you were going to come back and-

Mr Humphries: They were very similar words.

MR QUINLAN: I thought you were going to bash me up with Hansard yesterday or today, Mr Humphries.

Mr Humphries: I might yet do so.

Mr Moore: It comes out electronically and it makes it hard.

MR QUINLAN: I have a copy of it as of yesterday. Do you want me to read it to you?

Mr Humphries: If you are ashamed of it, yes, by all means.

MR QUINLAN: And it was available yesterday. I do want to make clear and to place on the record that, within a much higher degree of qualification, the ALP does support TransACT. I do not have the benefit of a presentation of a business case, and I am sure that members of government should have, or would have, and I do not have the intimate technical understanding to know for certain that this is going to deliver all that it promises. I do not have sufficient knowledge of the market to know that it is going to achieve the penetration in the market that is necessary to reach that critical mass that is necessary for its viability.

But I do defend, first of all, the position of the public accounts committee. In fact the public accounts committee was scrupulous in what it went though in terms of what we thought at the beginning was the scotching of ill-founded rumours. It turns out that as early as June there had been advice that there were considerable amounts of additional funding flowing into TransACT without the knowledge of this Assembly or without any attempt by government to advise this Assembly. We now cannot be confident that if it was not for the fact that the public accounts committee performed its duty we would still not know to this day that that much additional funds had flowed into TransACT. We would not know that there is still, on current estimates, something in the order of $60 million worth of capital funding yet to be found to complete the installation of the project as it is currently planned.

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