Page 3152 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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We often hear in this debate from the Liberals and others who are concerned about this project that this is an extraordinary cost for the ACT Treasury and the ACT taxpayer to bear. But it is not when you look at the context of the ACT government’s infrastructure spend, either over the last 10 years or even over shorter periods of time.
Let me give you some examples, Mr Assistant Speaker. Over the last 10 years the government has invested $3.9 billion in infrastructure. That is not recurrent expenditure; that is capital investment, infrastructure expenditure—$3.9 billion over the last 10 years. Of that, $1.6 billion has been spent on hospital infrastructure, on school infrastructure and on community facility infrastructure. Over the same period, over the last 10 years, we have spent over $1 billion on road infrastructure.
You do not hear the Liberal Party and those others who are critics of the project say how dastardly the ACT government’s budget position is because over the past 10 years we spent over a billion dollars on road infrastructure. But when the government suggests that we spend $610 million plus the contingency figure on light rail, all of a sudden it is disastrous for the ACT budget position. Quite clearly, they are not looking at the context of the government’s infrastructure spend.
We have also spent over that time, in comparison, only $225 million on public transport infrastructure. Over a billion dollars has been spent on roads over the past 10 years; in the same period only $225 million has been spent on public transport infrastructure. It is time to make the shift. It is time to address that gross and growing imbalance in terms of where investment occurs in the transport sector. And it is critical that we make better investments in public transport.
We know what the economic case for that is in terms of congestion. The bureau of resource economics has concluded that the cost of infrastructure currently is over $100 million a year that is lost, in terms of lost productivity in the ACT economy, and that is projected by the year 2030 to grow to over $200 million a year. So Mr Coe and the Liberals talk about the economic impact of light rail and the broader economic benefit. Where are they thinking about the economic impact of continuing business as usual, which we know is going to lead to an economic cost here in the ACT of over $200 million per annum in the year 2030 if we just keep going with business as usual? Really, these are the failures of the criticisms of this project. These are the fundamental failures of the criticisms of this project.
Let me turn now to Mr Coe’s motion, specifically in relation to his call for the government to disclose the ongoing liability, as he characterises it, that taxpayers will take on as a result of the decision to proceed with this project. The government has been very clear from the beginning that we will not enter into speculation on the availability payment, as it is known, that will be effectively the concession payment over the long term that the government will pay when this infrastructure is commissioned. And why have we said that? We have said that because to do so would be basically to tell the bidders that are going to be in a competitive process what we are willing to pay on an annual basis. We are not going to do that. It is like going to an auction and saying, “This is the price that I want,” before the auction takes place.
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