Page 997 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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hold these shares in trust. It is time for the government to be more honest and frank. It is time for the government to give the people of Canberra, who are paying for the dam, some straight answers.
So my motion carries two main elements: it calls on the government to tell us the story as it stands now and it calls on the government to give the Assembly and therefore the people of Canberra regular updates on progress. This is a simple and perfectly normal approach that any government should deliver. It is a simple and perfectly normal approach that the people of the ACT should expect from their government.
Let me express the call of this motion in the clearest possible terms. First, I deal with the story as it stands, starting from the position of the last known budget for the dam, $363 million. We want to know four things. Two of them relate to the period up to the March rain event and two relate to the impact of that rain event, and they should not be blurred in any way.
In relation to the period up to the March 2012 rain event, we want to know the latest budget figure for the completion of the dam to the point of commissioning into service. Obviously some explanation of any difference between that figure and the last known budget figure would be appropriate. Also in relation to the period up to the March 2012 rain event, we want to know how much had actually been spent on the project up to that time. Again, some discussion would be desirable about how that spend compares with what might have been expected to have been spent up to that point of construction. Then we want to know what impact the March rain event has had on the new budget as it stood prior to the March rain. We want to know when Actew will be able to commission the completed dam into service. Once again, some discussions about changes in the time frame would be appropriate.
The second element of the motion calls on the government to give regular updates at each Assembly sitting. These updates should include construction progress, any revision in the commissioning date, how much has been spent on the project as at that time, and any revisions to the final budget. Again, it would be appropriate for the government to provide an analysis of any major change.
We should not have to ask the Assembly to agree to a motion like this. The government should provide the information as a matter of course. As I touched on in the previous debate, what the government should do and what the government actually does are two different things.
This motion will be a test for this government. It will also be a test for the crossbenches. In September 2009, when we had the final horror of the blow-out of the cost for the dam to $363 million, the Canberra Liberals fought hard to obtain a full and open inquiry into the processes that led to the blow-out in the dam. As is often the case, the crossbenches wimped it. They did not agree to a full and open inquiry; they agreed to a much less inquiry and a constrained inquiry by the ICRC. I mean no criticism of the ICRC; they could only work with the terms of reference that they were given, and it was a flawed set of terms of reference. They had a flawed set of terms of reference because, as is always the case when it comes to transparency, when it comes
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