Page 3992 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
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chair and the effective dismissal of the previous chair. It is somewhat notorious in its own right that an ABC radio journalist was able to draw that out of the minister.
I think the whole situation has been a little disappointing. It has created an unnecessary political storm, and I think the core of the issue here is that the government seemed unwilling to acknowledge that the Assembly actually wanted EPIC to stay as a territory authority and instead took a number of steps to stack the board with its own officials. I will not elaborate on this issue much further, as I am aware there is a matter before the Assembly in regard to the EPIC board. But, more broadly, what this situation has demonstrated is that the government did not appear to value the territory authority structure or the things that a board can offer. It also did not value the diversity that Canberra business leaders and community members could bring to a board such as this.
I would also like to pick up the issue of the Cotter Dam in the remaining time that I have. Clearly, this is an issue that requires much further exploration over the coming days and weeks. There are a few things that I would like to set out at the front of this. Firstly, the Greens believe that water and water infrastructure must stay in public hands. Secondly, we do not think that access to water and water services should be privatised. From that basis, we believe it is in our interest that Actew does remain wholly owned and controlled by the territory. There is no doubt that this arrangement throws up a number of challenges, and at this time in particular, with the set of price increases that we have seen over a number of years for the cost of the Cotter Dam project, we have ended up with a situation where we have got a somewhat more expensive price tag than the Canberra community and, I imagine, the government were expecting. We now see some of those challenges coming to the fore in terms of accountability.
There are a number of questions that need to be answered in regard to this issue. I would suggest that, while the Treasurer tried today to reassure us that previous price tags for the Cotter Dam were only estimates and almost tried to reassure us that we should have seen it coming, our own Chief Minister was reported in the media as being shocked and surprised about the cost blow-out, so it is unclear which it was. We should have expected it, but we were shocked and surprised. That underlines the ambiguity of the situation with the territory-owned corporations. We seem to have a situation that, when it suits, Actew is part of the government, but, when it does not suit, it is not part of the government. Mr Seselja touched on this point earlier, and we see this coming up in a number of different contexts.
In terms of what we need to look at with regard to the cost blow-out of the Cotter Dam, there are a number of questions that need to be answered. What was the process of reaching those final costs? Is that process acceptable to the territory? Is the process of determining costs a good process to achieve the best value for money for the ACT? Is Actew, which is charged with a responsibility of managing this large infrastructure project, managing it effectively?
Certainly in estimates—and I have commented on this in this press already—we saw the chief executive of Actew, Mr Mark Sullivan, talk about the different cost processes. He basically said, “We always start with a low number. The final cost is always going to be higher than that.” I have paraphrased slightly, as I do not have the
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