Page 3136 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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Mr Seselja: He said it very clearly.
Mrs Dunne: Point of order, Mr Assistant Speaker, he has to withdraw.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: What was the point of order?
Mrs Dunne: Mr Corbell called Mr Smyth a liar and it needs to be withdrawn.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I did not hear it. If that is so, I would ask the minister withdraw that.
Mr Corbell: I withdraw, Mr Assistant Speaker.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Thank you, very much. We will move on. If everybody would just like to take a Bex and have a good lie down for a couple of seconds, I can deal with the business.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.14—Department of the Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water—$23,470,000 (net cost of outputs), $15,137,000 (capital injection) and $1,350,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $39,957,000.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.16): I want to talk about just a couple of issues in the department’s budget. One of the things that arose out of estimates was the issue around solar panels on Canberra Stadium. It was an example, I think, of not handling a process very well. I will give Simon Corbell the benefit of the doubt: it may not have been all his fault; he may have inherited some of this.
We had an original proposal, which was for three wind towers and 200 photovoltaic panels, which was announced on 14 December 2007. The result was 72 solar panels announced on 3 December 2009. We read comments by the project manager in documents received under FOI: “It has been agreed previously that the original scope for the works at Canberra Stadium had been poorly conceived and that we should re-evaluate the process and return to concept development.” They had announced something that simply was not feasible. It is a bit of a pattern with this government that they are big on the announcements but not so big on the follow-through. This is another example of that.
Then we saw that the system was not operational when it was opened by Minister Corbell on 3 December 2009. There was another email from the project manager on 10 December 2009: “For your information, the solar system at Canberra Stadium is currently turned off, as our electrical contractor has failed to obtain necessary clearances to commission the system, despite previous assurances from him that this was being done.” It is worth repeating that: “The solar system at Canberra Stadium is currently turned off, as our electrical contractor has failed to obtain necessary clearances to commission the system”. So potentially it was not legal to turn these on, to install these panels. The minister was asked:
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