Page 1941 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
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minister had her head in the sand, in a state of denial. When she finally attempted to do something, she did so because she said she had to cover her backside. One of the things that she did was to cover her ears and tell people who were employed at Bimberi that she did not want to hear their stories.
It was only after the Canberra Liberals’ agitating, thumping and speaking up that she was forced to acknowledge that there were serious flaws in the security and the operation at Bimberi and they are now putting money towards fixing it. Like the AMC, Bimberi’s pretended opening in September 2008 touted it as safe and secure. Like the AMC, Bimberi was not.
Minister Burch should not be proud of her record. She should be ashamed at her inaction. She should be ashamed that her action only came about because she could no longer take the Canberra Liberals’ agitating, thumping and speaking up for the people most affected by her bad policy. She could no longer ignore the plight of the community. Then again, perhaps there is just the hint of an election in the air.
Let me turn to water. Yesterday the Assembly agreed to a motion put forward by the Canberra Liberals that called on the executive to commission an inquiry by the ICRC into the economic, environmental and social viability of secondary water use in the ACT. In that debate the minister made the extraordinary admission that he was building revenue-generating infrastructure in the urban waterways program before he had done any economic viability analysis.
Noting it is in the future tense, he stated, “It will be a requirement that the ICRC provide advice on the pricing of the water to be made available from these non-potable sources.” It is quite clear from the minister’s words yesterday that it would not be possible that a commercial organisation would dig a big hole in the ground before undertaking any economic viability analysis, including costings and pricing and the future cost of the commodity that would come out of that big hole.
But in truth, the urban waterways program is Simon Corbell’s legacy program. He is willing to spend the money of struggling Canberra families on projects that by no means have been proven to be viable. I wonder how many other infrastructure projects this government has undertaken for which no economic viability analysis has been made. I wonder, for example, whether the viability ruler was ever run over Jon Stanhope’s edifice of ego, the government office block that he has proposed in his budget. But then again I digress.
The tragedy of this approach is that there are unsuspecting people in our community who might be thinking that they will get access to this non-potable water for their ovals and playing fields. What they do not know is what they will be paying for it. It might work out that it is just as cheap to draw it from the potable water supply, especially if the government does as the minister has said it was going to do, and reviews the way the water prices are set.
Mr Corbell thinks it is a bit premature to have the ICRC do a viability analysis now. But it is clear that the Assembly did not think so. We in the Canberra Liberals believe that it is well overdue. Perhaps Mr Corbell does not want to know the viability truth about his pet project. Perhaps a memorial does not warrant such analysis.
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