Page 4938 - Week 13 - Thursday, 12 November 2009
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MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (11.25): I find Mrs Dunne’s contribution this morning quite outrageous.
Mrs Dunne: Inconvenient for you.
MS HUNTER: I have to say, Mrs Dunne, that sarcasm just does not suit you. If we actually look at the issue of the dam, we see that the dam is a serious and complicated matter and issue; therefore it takes serious and intelligent people to be part of finding our way forward. What we as the Greens have done is find a good way forward.
The issue around the costings is this. I note that Mr Seselja was saying, “Numbers; numbers everywhere.” And there are. The numbers—the cost estimates—continue to rise, and we do need to find out what was behind those cost increases.
That is why the Greens looked at this issue. They looked around and I believe came up with a very sensible way forward. That was to refer it off to the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission, who have the expertise, who were involved in looking at the cost of the dam back when it was at $145 million. They have a track record on this; they have base data to work from and they are in the best position to be able to look at this issue in great detail with the best expertise available.
Mrs Dunne is saying, “That’s no good. We should still have an inquiry here because they are just outsourcing it anyway.” Well, that is what they do with their inquiries. But I will tell you what: the commission itself has the expertise to then be assessing that work that it is commissioning from other experts. So again, it is far better placed to deal with it than an inquiry here in the Assembly. I would say that Mr Baxter and his team have far more experience than, say, Mr Smyth or Mr Seselja, particularly around issues of costing, financial analysis and cost-benefit analysis and also issues around quantity surveying, geotechnical information and so forth.
I think there is an issue around the geotechnical information and finding that we had to dig nine metres further down than was originally thought to be required—and that that information did not come in in a timely manner or probably in a way that was in the best interests of the project. But again, that does need to be looked at as part of this whole investigation or as part of the scrutiny that will apply in annual reports.
It is a nonsense to say that there will not be scrutiny on this issue. There will be the sorts of costs and financial scrutiny that will be done by the ICRC. And I truly do hope that during annual report hearings the Liberals will be putting in some effort and some focus, putting forward many of the other questions and queries that we too believe need to be answered or are still outstanding.
I note from the paper today that Mr Sullivan has said that it was unfortunate that the $145 million was taken as being the total cost of the dam rather than the construction cost. My question back to Mr Sullivan is this: why was that not corrected? Why was that record, the public record, not corrected a lot earlier? That is a question that we will pursue, because that would have been the proper and right thing to do in this case.
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