Page 3092 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 2013
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And what happened? The more polished proposals from other states got ahead of us because Mr Corbell did not do the job, as so often Mr Corbell does not. Mr Corbell never gets the work done. When projects are sometimes finally finished, it is at a large cost overrun to the people of the ACT.
Look at the initial proposal to Infrastructure Australia. It was to ask for some money to make the decision between buses and trains. But before we even got the answer we chose trains. Why would Infrastructure Australia take this government and this minister in particular seriously when they do not take themselves seriously?
The problem for this government is that they have got the wrong minister trying to deliver this project. We have a minister who cannot make a case. You can have all the rhetoric in the world that you want; you can have your hifalutin speeches and you can talk about it as long as you want, but, at the end of the day, you have to make a solid case, you have to deliver the benefits and you have to be able, if you go ahead with the project—and I think that is a big if at this stage—to deliver it. Mr Corbell does not have the record for an ability to deliver capital works projects.
It will be interesting. I notice he puts words in the Chief Minister’s mouth that she is 100 per cent behind this project and that they will deliver it. We will see. I note the Treasurer does not speak a great deal about capital metro. Funny that. When we ask him questions about what input the Treasury had to capital metro we get very, very short answers, very terse answers.
There is a lot of doubt inside the bureaucracy and inside the government about this project. There is a lot of doubt. It will be interesting to see what the excuse is, just like on the great big office building, when it does not go ahead? Top of my list would be, “Tony Abbott ruined it for us. It’s all Tony Abbott’s fault.” That seems to be the excuse at the moment. Mr Barr has been running the Tony Abbott line for about four years now. But I can hear it already, “How do we get out of this mess? Another fine mess you’ve got us into, Simon. We should have given this portfolio to Shane. He’d have done a much better job.” You can hear the murmurings, you can hear the whispers. The question is: when will they make the decision to back away from this? Mr Hanson is right—perhaps we should have a book on it. It will be interesting to see.
This is exactly like the great big office building the government wanted to build. It was going to save us money. But when we asked for the savings we got an A4 piece of paper that was obviously dollied up on the night after perhaps the biggest hearing in the history of the Assembly where there were more people at the table than I have ever seen in a committee. Finally we got some savings, which virtually dissolved overnight because they were not really there.
The case has not been made. All we are saying is: make the case. The case has not been made. You do not go ahead on capital works projects by saying, “We think this is a good idea. Let’s do it.” You go ahead and you deliver on time, on scope and on budget by saying, “Let’s do the investigation. Let’s make sure it works. Let’s make sure it delivers.”
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