Page 584 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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have been finished by now. Once again, roadworks will be undertaken, significant delays will occur and we will have another 18 months or two years of frustration and annoyance for peak-hour traffic going to and from Gungahlin.
We have seen the government’s record with schools. We have seen it even with their lauded superschools. Initially the west Belconnen superschool was supposed to take 1,500 students; then it was to deliver 1,100. When it opened, it was fewer than 800. Even then, it was still a construction site. Even as students are moving in, we see the barbed wire fences. We see the barbed wire fences around the schools.
This government cannot get it done. We have seen its record in public housing, in the maintenance of public housing. It has not been able to get it done.
It is particularly important that we look at a major infrastructure project. If we are to look at the two infrastructure projects of the last few years that are significant—and in a $1.6 billion boom this does put it into perspective—we have got the one-lane GDE and we have got the Alexander Maconochie Centre. They are the two major infrastructure projects that the people of the ACT have to show for this boom.
Mrs Dunne: What was the common element? Simon Corbell.
MR SESELJA: Indeed. We do have Simon Corbell’s hands all over it. But this government needs to take responsibility. The prison, which was initially going to cost $110 million and have 374 prisoners, will now cost taxpayers $131 million and hold only 300 prisoners. And we have seen a number of other things downsized. We see no gym and no chapel or quiet area. But we do have some significant artworks at the prison. That is $131 million—$131 million and it is not open. We are going to be six months past the official opening before we see prisoners start to move in.
This has been the way this government has managed infrastructure in the territory. Costs blow out, time frames blow out, the projects are not delivered in full, and in the case of the prison it is still not delivered. It is still not delivered. It is a major embarrassment to the community. It is a major embarrassment to this government that it had an opening in September, pretending that it was ready, pretending that it was ready to open, pretending that it was finished—doing this sham opening prior to an election to try and say, “Well, look, we have delivered. We have delivered. We have delivered a prison and a one-lane road.” That is the infrastructure legacy of this government over the past few years.
What we need—and we made this case at budget time last year when the government announced significant infrastructure spending—is to see how this government are going to do things differently to get it done, particularly as we see the urgency of some of the infrastructure funding that is likely to come from the commonwealth. This government need to tell us; Ms Gallagher, when she gets up, needs to tell us. There is a new position—which is essentially a public servant taken offline, in the words of the Chief Minister—to work on infrastructure. That is all well and good, but what structural changes will this government make to ensure that their appalling record in the delivery of infrastructure over the past few years will change, that we will see something different, that the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’
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