Page 3901 - Week 12 - Thursday, 30 October 2014
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highlighting that Mr Coe was struggling in the last hearing on TAMS to fill that 3½ hours of dedicated time that the Assembly had ordered. He was struggling to do that.
Nevertheless the government remains committed and open to providing appropriate time. As Mr Rattenbury has said, there will be an opportunity less than three weeks after the release of the business case for very fulsome questioning to be had on the project and its business case at the annual reports hearing for Capital Metro Agency, as there will be next year in relation to the estimates committee process.
I note that in the motion that Mr Coe circulated earlier today he initially indicated that he wanted this proposed inquiry to report by February 2014. This proposal was such a rush job by Mr Coe that he did not do what would normally have been done, which was to put it on the agenda for Assembly business on Thursday morning. He obviously had not thought of this on Tuesday because otherwise he would have put it on the notice paper for Assembly business on Thursday morning. And it was such a rush job that the reporting date for his select committee inquiry was February this year. Clearly, there were all the signs of a rush job by Mr Coe, and we should consider his proposal in that light.
Nevertheless there is significant value in ensuring that the project continues to receive an appropriate level of scrutiny. Mr Rattenbury’s amendment sets out a sensible way of utilising the Assembly’s committee time to do that, and the government will be supporting Mr Rattenbury’s amendment.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.31): The opposition will not be supporting this amendment. Firstly, I would like to speak to the intent of what Mr Coe is trying to achieve here. I commend him for bringing this forward to this Assembly and continuing with his detailed scrutiny of this project, because the reality is that if it were not for Mr Coe and other experts in the community, this government would just be riding roughshod.
The government has said that this will cost in the order of $800 million. The full price, the full cost, is in some dispute, because we do not know exactly what it contains. But with a price tag of about $800 million it is the most expensive project in the ACT’s history by quite a margin. Previously it was the dam, which was in the order of $400 million. So it is double the most expensive infrastructure in the history of the ACT. Therefore, this uniquely demands the most scrutiny.
Remember as well, colleagues, that this is only phase 1 of what the government promises to be a multiphase project. So getting this right is enormously important. Understanding this phase, understanding this business case, is enormously important because the government has told us it is going to roll this out across the ACT.
The government has told us that this is going to be transformative. I have some scepticism about the transformational effect of light rail. But those opposite say this is going to transform the whole city. So if we have a project that is going to cost $800 million and that is going to transform our whole city, in the words of those opposite, surely it behoves us to have a look at the business case and to do so in an objective fashion.
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