Page 1329 - Week 04 - Thursday, 8 May 2014
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We wait with bated breath for something on one of these projects. And who knows? Maybe this is the year when the budget will include millions of dollars in capital works for each of these projects—or, perhaps more likely, they will say, “We’re just a few months away from that foreign investor writing the cheque.” I have a feeling that we are always going to be just a few months away from that cheque coming in from overseas which is going to bankroll all of these projects. Well, we can live in hope. Meanwhile there are other projects in Canberra that I think have been left by the wayside. I hope that the government ensures that it gets back to core business rather than some of these ideas, which, whilst they might sound good, perhaps do not have a very high likelihood of getting off the ground.
Infrastructure is vital to ensuring the future economic growth of Canberra, but it is investment in the correct infrastructure, the infrastructure which will produce the best economic outputs, which needs to happen here in our capital. It is sad that this government seem to be sidetracked by large and expensive transport infrastructure projects such as capital metro. The government do not seem to be concerned by the economic outputs when they decide to invest in infrastructure; rather, they look for the most grandiose scheme, the one that will grab the most headlines, but not the one that will produce the best economic results.
The government’s light rail project, in particular, I believe, is ill-conceived because, quite frankly, they did not do the work prior to committing to the project. The light rail project is far from a case study of how taxpayers’ money should be spent on infrastructure. For starters, the government had not conducted economic modelling or public consultation on any other potential light rail route in the ACT when they decided to build Gungahlin to the city. In fact the government had not even finalised any plans for the future of light rail in the ACT when they announced that the route would be going ahead, with the support of Mr Rattenbury. Therefore it is not surprising that when the government investigated the Gungahlin to the city light rail route the results were less than optimal.
On the government’s own modelling the benefit of light rail is minor, and even under minor adverse circumstances it will produce a negative economic result for Canberra. This is in their own report. I think that Mr Barr, of all those opposite, is very much aware of this.
Furthermore the government’s own modelling even suggests that investment in other forms of transport infrastructure would be much cheaper to the taxpayer and produce far better economic results. This was picked up by Infrastructure Australia who, when refusing to grant $15 million to this project to conduct a feasibility study, queried why the government was going ahead with light rail when there were other options which produced better economic results. Infrastructure Australia was also at a loss to explain how this government had excluded other potential infrastructure projects. The government seemingly provided a limited rationale for excluding other infrastructure options.
How can we say that this government are truly concerned with creating confidence and job generation in the ACT when they are investing $614 million in a project which is so poorly thought out? Only now are they starting to think about a broader
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