Page 4057 - Week 13 - Thursday, 6 December 2007
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bridge could be restored at a cost of $4.98 million to at least light traffic standard within weeks. Now that you have intervened, does this RTA report alter the statement you made on ABC radio on Tuesday afternoon and repeated in the chamber yesterday? If not, why not?
MR STANHOPE: I can answer the question quite simply. The most recent advice available to me is that in order to restore the Tharwa bridge to a point where it can safely handle light traffic would involve a cost of the order of $10 million. That is the most recent advice I have available.
Mr Pratt: That is different to the $15 million or $25 million that you were talking about yesterday.
MR STANHOPE: That is to restore as is, with a 20-tonne load limit. There are three other options with three other price variables that have been provided to me. They remain the latest advice available to me.
Mr Pratt, if you can actually give me some surety or are prepared to provide a statutory declaration from somebody within the New South Wales RTA that the New South Wales RTA undertakes to restore this bridge for $4.9 million, or the figure you have just quoted, then I might actually outside the chamber approach Mr Pratt with a view to his advocating or being a consultant on behalf of the government to sign with the RTA, which is the only organisation, I am advised, with the skills and capacity to restore the Tharwa bridge, to do the job for $4.9 million. Mr Pratt, if you think you can deliver the RTA to the ACT government for $4.9 million to restore that bridge to a 20-tonne load limit—
Mr Pratt interjecting—
MR STANHOPE: Mr Pratt, I would like to talk to you, perhaps after question time, about the basis of a consultancy or a contract that we can enter into with you. There would probably need to be some clauses in it in relation to the penalty or the default that you might have to deliver if you cannot deliver the RTA to the ACT government for $4.9 million.
I will get on to the RTA. I am sure we will get a firmer price from them. Depending on the outcomes of the consultation, it is very much—
Mr Pratt: Don’t wait for me.
MR STANHOPE: We are not. In fact, we are in consultation now. Mr Hargreaves is across the detail of issues on the construction of the Tharwa bridge far more than I am, but I believe the most recent pricing indication the ACT government has received from the RTA in relation to the bridge is that just to remove the trusses—and this was a back-of-the-envelope, informal conversation between officials—without the rest of the restoration would involve a charge by the RTA of $6.5 million. I believe that advice is as recent as two weeks ago.
We are in constant discussion with the RTA. They are the only organisation in Australia, we understand, with the expertise and the capacity. I believe—and I am
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