Page 1876 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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It is worth returning to the quote that I referred to earlier from the Chief Minister. He said:
… suggestions that either I or the government took into account the respective valuations or returns to government in relation to the selection of one particular site over another are spurious and false.
He said that on 16 June and is contradicted by several documents which I have tabled for the Assembly. Mr Stanhope even attempted to verbal the head of the Land Development Agency, claiming:
He said there would be an opportunity cost but it was not a consideration.
Mr Mitchell was asked by Mr Smyth:
So we are looking to the profit there; we want to maximise the profit on that block of land?
He replied:
It is a relevant consideration.
The government had a twofold responsibility: to help ensure that the project went ahead while at the same time protecting the people of Canberra. This government has comprehensively failed on both these counts. The site identification and selection process was so flawed and so futile that the project has been jeopardised. The shortlisted sites were all unavailable or unsuitable. The final site, championed by the Chief Minister, has proven to be woefully inadequate. Mr Costello, from ActewAGL, told the media, after the development application had been lodged:
It’s too small. It has to be 350 to 450 (megawatts) so that site was not suitable whether there were protests or not.
I remind the Assembly of what has been stripped from the project so far. The number of jobs created was to be 400; now it is 300. And the data pod buildings will be reduced from 13 to 10. As John Thistleton wrote in the Canberra Times:
Let’s be clear about this debate. It’s about the ACT Government having an exceptional opportunity to take Canberra forward—and dropping the ball.
The government did not make an effort to identify a wide range of sites that could meet the needs of ActewAGL’s proposal. Residents in Woden and Tuggeranong believe that site identification was handled appallingly. This is not just the view of the general public, but also the view of ACT government planning officials in ACTPLA. When ACTPLA officials reviewed the preliminary assessment for the proposal just a few weeks ago, they wrote:
No information is provided as to why this site has been chosen over any other.
They also referred to the “abundance of comparable broadacre sites” in the ACT. In their own words:
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