Page 472 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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and a great example of how private sector investment does indeed add value for all Canberrans.
This week the airport, of course, released their master plan for the future of the airport and surrounds, and I welcome their innovation and continued investment in the precinct. There is, of course, still work to be done on how the airport can be better integrated with the rest of the city, and I hope the ACT government will live up to their end of the bargain in making sure that the airport can work as effectively as it can with the rest of the city.
The other notable exception in Dr Bourke’s motion, albeit for the wrong reasons, is, of course, the enlarged Cotter Dam project. This is a project that had problems from the very beginning, in fact, from before the beginning if there is such a time, and I do hope that the Auditor-General’s inquiry, the current investigation, will get to the bottom of how, indeed, it blew out in time and how, indeed, it blew out in cost from the early estimates in the low $100 million to over $410 million for the Cotter Dam alone—not counting all the water security measures, just the Cotter Dam.
It is important that we as members are fully across the story of the Cotter Dam. I might turn to the core of the dam, that is, the cost of the abutment and the dam wall, in effect the foundations and the actual dam wall itself. In the 2009 contract it was meant to cost $93.7 million. In 2013, the actual figure was $146.4 million. So it has gone up by $52.7 million. The only known externality, the only known additional cost, was a geotechnical issue in the valley which cost $3.7 million.
What is the other $49 million for? The dam wall and the foundation went up by $49 million, and there is no explanation for it. It is important to note that the government and ACTEW said there were fish studies, there were habitat studies, there was a flood et cetera. They are not included in this cost. The increase from $93.7 million to $146.4 million does not include any of those costs. They are all separate. They all contribute to the overall cost of $410 million but they are not included in this additional $52.7 million. The only known externality is the $3.7 million they spent for a geotechnical issue in the valley of the dam.
On a number of occasions the government said that the dam cost had increased due to excavation of an additional nine metres. However, the planned excavation was only four to seven metres, and that is in effect what they did. Upon discovery of this geotechnical issue, they needed to use an additional 10,000 cubic metres of concrete. That might sound like a lot but in the scheme of things it was a pretty small amount, in fact only about three per cent of the additional concrete that was used.
However, in another pass they actually saved concrete. So it was not even a three per cent increase. The net increase of additional concrete was even less than three per cent. In 2009, they expected to use 9,000 cubic metres of conventional concrete, and they used 20,000 in reality. However, in regard to the roller-compacted concrete, they expected to use 386,000 cubic metres and they only used 361,000 cubic metres. So there was a saving there. In effect if you go through all the government’s stated reasons as to why the cost blew out—and they can all be debunked—it was not more excavation, it was not more concrete. It was not fish. It was not habitat. It was not the flood.
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