Page 4232 - Week 11 - Thursday, 17 Sept 2009
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are ensuring that taxpayer dollars are protected, that we are getting absolute best value for money.
The cost blow-out to date does not instil us with confidence. It does not instil us with any confidence that it is being managed appropriately. If the blow-out is in the vicinity of 200 per cent from the original estimate, which is what we are looking at at the moment, then it is difficult to have confidence going forward that all of the internal processes, processes that we cannot see, are actually being adequately managed.
The government needs to answer these questions. Mr Corbell needs to come and clarify the record, based on what he said after question time today, and he needs to tell us or the Treasurer needs to tell us what changed between 18 May, when we were told in estimates that it was $188 million—we were told it was 30 per cent above the $145 million figure—and 30 May, when we were told it was $246 million. And then when did it blow out beyond that? There are a range of questions that remain unanswered.
Mr Hanson has gone through the underspends of this government on capital works and it is worth nothing that the capital underspends, of course, have been massive. They have been somewhere between a third and a half of their capital works budget every year. But we have also seen massive blow-outs on individual projects.
So they are spending more on individual projects than they should be. We have seen it with the dam. We saw it with the GDE. We saw it, indeed, with the prison, where we spent more than was originally budgeted but got less. So we are spending more on individual projects but the government is spending less than its target, which means we are getting a hell of a lot less than we bargained for, not just in dollars but in terms of actual deliverables and in actual outcomes.
This is something the government have refused to do anything about. We put it to them even a couple of years ago that structural changes were needed to ensure the more efficient delivery of capital works. And what have we seen since then in terms of structural changes? We have seen nothing. We see the continual underspend. We can see the continual overspend on individual projects, individual projects blowing out, overall capital works targets not being met. The government have not made any hard decisions, not made structural changes that would actually see the better delivery of infrastructure in the territory. What that does, of course, is hold back economic growth. It holds back the delivery of those infrastructure projects that we need.
The Cotter Dam is an example, not just with the blow-out to $363 million but once again the delay that we have seen from this government, the delay for years and years, to the extent that Actew is now warning us again about stage 4 water restrictions. We would not be faced now with stage 4 water restrictions if this government had taken action earlier. They have now had eight years. It has been dry for most of that time.
Any government with any foresight, faced with the drought we have seen, would have said, “We need to plan for the long term.” Even if it does start raining in six months or 12 months, there will be another drought around the corner. We cannot assume that
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