Page 1001 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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The other thing that is significant, I think, about the amendments from Mr Barr and why Mrs Dunne is looking to get to the bottom of this issue is that we now know, with roughly half of the dam wall built, that the government has spent $315.7 million. This was a $120 million project. It was then a $145 million project. It blew out.
Then we were told, with the largest cost blow-out in the territory’s history—$363 million—that that was the end of it. We were told the contingencies had been worked through, that this was absolutely the top end of the estimates, that it would not go beyond $363 million. Yet we are now told that as at 29 February they had already spent $315 million. And we are expected to believe in this amendment that at that point they were only planning still to spend $363 million.
This is laughable. It is not credible that they would have still been budgeting to spend $363 million. They are expecting now, and they would have been expecting before these rain events, to again blow this budget, this budget which we were told was the absolute top, the absolute. It was a $243 million blow-out. There was a $243 million projected blow-out and we were told: “No, this is it. It will not go any further.”
We need to get to the bottom of this because it is going to be Canberrans who will be paying for this. We are going to be paying through our water bills for decades to come for this cost blow-out. This government cannot tell us where it is going to end. They now cannot tell us where it is going to end.
They stand condemned for the $243 million blow-out. They stand condemned for putting the people of the ACT in this position by doing nothing for years. Their legacy when it comes to infrastructure will be a road extension that took a decade that they refused to build properly that blew out massively in cost, that caused all sorts of delays for Canberrans, and a dam project that they first refused to consider, tried to rule out, eventually worked on and then saw the cost blow out from $120 million to $363 million. They then told us that that was the absolute top. It would never go beyond that. Reputations were on the line. Reputations are on the line.
The Chief Minister, the Deputy Chief Minister and this government are the shareholders of Actew. They are meant to protect the interests of Canberrans as shareholders of Actew. They have apparently given a blank cheque. They have given a blank cheque and we do not know what the size of that cheque will now be. All we know, all the information this government is now giving us, is that before the rains came it had already got to $315 million. It had already got to $315 million and they are expecting us to believe that they were planning that they could do the remainder, the other 40 metres and all the associated works on this dam wall, for only another $48 million or less.
Maybe they can. Maybe they can demonstrate it to us. Maybe their budget still is $363 million. Maybe it is. I do not think so but we, as taxpayers, as water users in Canberra, have been put in an impossible position by the rank incompetence of ACT Labor. They refused to do it. Then they did it eventually. That delay has caused problems. They budgeted for $123 million and we have seen the largest blow-out ever in the territory’s history on a project—a $243 million blow-out that is now $243 million and counting. We demand some answers.
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