Page 1242 - Week 04 - Thursday, 26 March 2015
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It is all very well for the government to have a Minister for Urban Renewal, but really that title should be changed to “minister for pet projects”, because, as far as I can see, it is not actually urban renewal in the urban areas of Canberra, it is just pet projects of Minister Barr. Ms Lawder spoke about the shopping centres in her electorate. Of course there are shopping centres right across Canberra that have been promised upgrades. We have been promised upgrades time and again, yet this government cannot find any money for it, apparently—but they can find money for pet projects right across Canberra.
Of course the number one pet project for this government is the light rail project, a $783 million project. A public servant who might be listening to this debate via webstreaming should just have a think next time they put together a budget submission. Have a think next time they have a worthy program or a worthy cause in their portfolio area and they need some money for it but it is rejected. The reason it is rejected is that $783 million of capital is going into light rail.
Mr Corbell: Don’t you not understand how a PPP works, Alistair? Clearly not. You have no idea.
MR COE: It is interesting. Mr Corbell says I do not know how a PPP works. What he is actually saying, therefore, is that it is not coming out of capital; it is coming out of recurrent. That is even worse.
Mr Corbell: You said “capital”, Alistair. You said it.
MR COE: Are they going to have $783 million of capital or are we going to have a PPP model where it comes out of recurrent, which is even worse?
Mr Barr: You can have both.
MR COE: Now Minister Barr is saying that we are going to have a bit of both. So you could get a situation whereby the government puts up $400 million of capital as an up-front payment and the remaining $400 million is going to be out of recurrent, paid over 20 or 30 years.
There are three options. You are going to have $783 million out of capital; you are going to have it all, 100 per cent, in availability payments; or, as the Chief Minister just indicated, a bit of both, which means that you might have, say, $400 million as a capital payment and the remaining $400 million, in effect, spread over 20 years. That means that we are either going to have $400 million and about $50 million a year for 20 or 30 years or we are going to have $100 million a year for the availability payment, spread over 20 years, or we are going to have an up-front payment of $783 million. They are roughly the scenarios.
But, one way or another, to the public servants listening, the money is not going into core services for Canberra; it is going into light rail. Further to that, of course, if we actually look at the operational expense of light rail, it starts at $23 million and goes up to about $40 million. So it is $23 million to $40 million for one line—for a dozen trams.
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