Page 353 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 February 2010
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commonwealth’s nation building and jobs plan—through all of these plans and packages—we have supported our local industry, protected local jobs and supported the continued growth of our economy. This support has provided confidence which has in fact assisted our local industry to grow.
I think it is worth highlighting some facts for members. Before we came into office in 2001 the average annual expenditure on capital works by the Carnell and Humphries Liberal governments between 1998 and 2001 was around $76 million per year. The average expenditure by the Stanhope government over the last three years was $265 million. That is more than three times as much as the Liberal opposition. For the 2008-09 financial year we again improved on our previous expenditure record, with expenditure totalling $296 million. This is the largest infrastructure spend on record.
To put this into perspective, this is over 3½ times more than those opposite achieved in their last year of government. When we came to office we faced a litany of aged, poor quality and dilapidated infrastructure with its associated challenges. But we have not sat back and complained or whinged, as we have come to expect from the opposition. We have simply got on with the task ahead.
The facts demonstrate our record of delivering capital works for the territory. This could not be achieved without the rigorous processes and improvements that we have put in place during our time in government to ensure quality program delivery. This includes: enhanced engagement with industry through a range of regular roundtable meetings and forums to assist in the delivery of capital projects; reinvigoration of the call tender schedule and its publication on the Procurement Solutions website; continual improvement of all procurement documentation and forms for ease of use; refinement of procurement thresholds which have been simplified to align more appropriately with industry expectation and to ease administrative burden on business; and improvements to the prequalification scheme, making it easier and more attractive for industry to tender for ACT government works and improve the efficiency of the procurement process.
The Treasurer, as she said earlier, has also reintroduced the publication of quarterly reports. These are in a format which is more relevant and useful for the community and which provides detail on what is being achieved in project delivery and how our major projects are progressing at various stages. The Treasurer is in the process of finalising the capital works report for the December quarter. I can advise the Assembly this afternoon that we as a government are well and truly on track to deliver another record spend.
To 31 December we had delivered approximately $180 million worth of works. This is almost double our achievement in the first six months of last year and double the largest full year spend that the opposition ever delivered. That is right—to 31 December 2009, in just six months, we have achieved a larger capital program than the last Liberal government managed to deliver in their best full year effort.
I would now like to highlight some of the government’s achievements in the first six months of this financial year. Included in this $180 million record today is the significant progress on major capital works packages for education, health, roads and
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