Page 2283 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
And it goes on.
The fact that this project is unviable appears to be slowly dawning on the government. This year, the government has considered imposing a city-wide levy to fund capital metro and is currently being lobbied by the Capital Metro Agency to deliberately favour development in Gungahlin. Who knows what other fanciful policy ideas the government will implement in order to try and make this project viable.
The Centre for International Economics has cast considerable doubt on the project. (Second speaking period taken.) The CIE report included the following sentence:
The cost of the Capital Metro is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and is a source of risk for the fiscal position of the ACT.
I will read that again:
The cost of the Capital Metro is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and is a source of risk for the fiscal position of the ACT.
We have heard a lot from the government about how many jobs will be created by the capital metro project. However, the CIE report points to the fact that any government expenditure on any capital works project is going to generate jobs. So simply saying that by spending money we are going to create jobs does not necessarily mean that this is a good project. There is always going to be an opportunity cost. As adjunct professor Leo Dobes pointed out in the Canberra Times, there is an opportunity cost for every dollar which is spent on capital metro. He pointed to health expenditure as a prime example where we could be putting that $1 billion of expenditure and perhaps get a far better return for the people of Canberra than by putting $1 billion into a tram line which does not have widespread support.
The fact that we have this risk hanging over the fiscal position of the ACT means that the capital metro project is a source of risk to our budget and therefore a source of risk to all Canberrans. With that in mind, we cannot support this budget.
In closing, this budget confirms the government’s commitment to light rail. It confirms the government’s commitment without a proper business case, without adequate consultation and on a political whim, to spend up to $1 billion of taxpayers’ money on a project that will serve less than three per cent of Canberrans. This should be a worry for all Canberra taxpayers. I urge the government to delay this project until a time in Canberra’s future when our city is far more inclined to support and sustain such a system through a vastly increased population and a vastly increased population density.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.27): Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise to speak to this line item in the budget because it is of such significance both in terms of the scale of the amount of money being appropriated and its impact on the future of Canberra. It is the most expensive project ever undertaken by the ACT government. Based on the estimates so far, that is about $4,500 a
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video