Page 3207 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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We did it with the sheep dip sites. It worked exceedingly well. We were able to address a number of health concerns at that time in the community and make Canberra a safer place.
This is another good report from the public accounts committee. I would hope, having failed to heed what PAC had to say in 2008, that the government might take heed of what PAC has now said in 2012.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.07): I rise briefly to add some words to this debate. Far too many times—and this is another example—we have seen ACT Labor waste taxpayers’ money through failing to manage projects. How many times are Canberra taxpayers going to be asked to fork out an extra $10 million, an extra $20 million, an extra $50 million, an extra $100 million or an extra $300 million in project cost blow-outs as a result of a failure to plan by this government? After 11 years you would expect that they would have got their processes right for avoiding these kinds of ridiculous failures.
We have seen it with the GDE, we have seen it with the Cotter Dam, we have seen it with the emergency services headquarters, we have seen it with the busway, we have seen it with FireLink and we see it again here with north Weston ponds. How many times are Canberrans going to be asked to foot that bill? The Auditor-General I think makes some damning findings in relation to the management of this project, and they sound eerily familiar. The audit found:
ACT Government agencies did not effectively manage the North Weston Pond project to ensure the project was completed for the budgeted cost within the planned timeframe. The project has required significant redesign to address escalating costs due to risks that were known at the earliest stages of the project. The smaller capacity ponds approved by the Minister for Transport in January 2011 are estimated to cost $43.4 million. This is $22.6 million (or 109 percent) more than the originally budgeted amount of $20.8 million. The original planned completion date of May 2011 has not been met.
How many times, Madam Deputy Speaker, will we see this? This is a government that, on its record in infrastructure alone, does not deserve another term. If it were to get another term, it appears that it has learnt nothing from these failures. It has learnt nothing from the GDE, it has learnt nothing from the Cotter Dam and it has learnt nothing from the emergency services headquarters. It has thrown away, through poor planning and poor management, literally hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. That is money that could have been invested in important projects.
Imagine what we could have done in public transport with those hundreds of millions of dollars. Imagine what we could have done with our roads with those hundreds of millions of dollars. Imagine what investments we could have made in our schools or our hospitals or our local sporting facilities. It is money that this government has thrown away. It is absolutely inexcusable, after 11 years, to be faced with the same problems that we have seen time and time again.
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