Page 2719 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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I had this out with the previous Chief Minister who said, “We are going to do this and then we will give you the strategy.” That is putting the cart before the horse.
Mr Stanhope at least had the good grace to accept the argument that perhaps they should have come up with a whole-of-government strategy because this building on its own, and the building proposed for Gungahlin, will virtually remove the need for a whole-of-government office accommodation strategy for a long time to come. That is the sort of poor planning that gets the government into trouble and forces the bail-out of government projects because they cannot deliver on time, on budget and on scope. The people who pay for that are the taxpayers and the government should have far more regard for the taxpayer’s dollar than they currently do.
I will not go through all of the recommendations in regard to the office block, but what they do say is that there is work to be done. The Assembly expects you, first and foremost, to respond to the public accounts committee to the satisfaction of that committee so that we can do this project properly.
You only need to look at the various projects, whether it be the car park at the hospital, Gungahlin Drive extension, the Alexander Maconochie Centre or the new headquarters at Fairbairn for the ESA. This government does not have a record that you would be proud of in regard to the delivery of capital works.
As to the rest of the Chief Minister’s department, it does cover a lot of ground. That is the nature of the department and there are a few recommendations there as well. First and foremost, the committee is saying that there should be a consistent publication timetable for the Canberra infrastructure plan. There is already a commitment to update annually. We want to see that. The government actually agrees. It responded:
The Government has already committed to annually updating the ACT Government Infrastructure Plan, which is a ten year rolling strategy, around the time of the Budget.
It needs to be done and it needs to be done regularly. There was a lot of discussion about Majura parkway. Recommendation 62 goes to that. The government has agreed to it in principle. It is important that we know what is happening with the parkway and how it is being funded. Recommendation 63 was about logos and I think that that may already have been won.
There are some recommendations governing the Hawke review, and particularly recommendation 66, which states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government publish and table a full breakdown of the costs of implementing the Hawke Review recommendations by the last sitting day of December 2011.
I am pleased to see that the government has agreed to that. It will be interesting to see the full cost of the Hawke review. Recommendation 67 stated:
The Committee recommends with regard to ACT Public Service Workers’ Compensation and Work Safety Improvement Plans that the ACT Government, by the last sitting day in June 2012, table progress reports …
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