Page 3063 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 August 2008
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can only assume it did. It is what he coughed up out of the estimates process. Here it says, in March 2008, there was absolutely no intention of doing it in under 10 years. This is Hargreaves/Stanhope maths, where four equals 10—it is really good—$83 million will build three roads for you, and four equals 10. It is quite instructive. There we are, project No 2:
GDE Stage 2 (South)
Belconnen Way-Glenloch Interchange
Time Frame: 0-5 years
The first third of the road was not going to be done in four years. All of the road was not going to be done in four years. The first third of the road was going to take somewhere between zero and five years. Cost, $30 million. It goes on:
GDE Stage 2 (North)
Belconnen Way-Barton Highway
Time Frame: 5-10 years—
that is, 2013 to 2018—
Indicative Project Cost: $60.0 Million
So we have got $90 million, we have got $84 million, we have got $83 million, we have got $4 million. We have got all these numbers, none of which add up. We have got a 10-year time frame. We have got a government who think that they can gazump the opposition and fool people. The embarrassment levels last week in this city over a Chief Minister who would not answer the question “did you know that the opposition were about to announce this?” were just hilarious.
I think even more hilarious is that, at the bottom of Mr Hargreaves’s letter to the Speaker—in which he says, “Here are your answers”—he says, “I apologise for the delay in responding.” The apology was, I do not think, given heartily because the questions were sitting on his desk for days; they just did not want to give the answers. And that is the problem with this government.
So what we have got is Labor’s promise “on time, on budget”; that is, July 2005, $53 million. We are now talking 2012, 12 years after I first announced the project, and somewhere between—who knows what it will be—$230 million and $250 million by the time it is finished, because this government simply cannot deliver. And that is the problem. We have had the high farce that the money is in the budget. It makes interesting reading when you go to page vii of budget paper 5. It says:
The Program also makes provision for future projects …
So it is not funded in this year’s budget, 2008-09; it is not appropriated. If you do not understand that, Mr Hargreaves, I will get you an economic dictionary. It is not appropriated so that it can begin. It continues:
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