Page 568 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016

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MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order! Mr Corbell, please stop speaking loudly across the room.

Mrs Dunne interjecting—

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne! Order! I would like to listen to Mr Coe. Mr Coe.

MR COE: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. So you have the government here saying, on one hand, “It is cheaper than expected,” and, on the other hand, “We have still got to do the park and ride, we have still got to do the land acquisitions, we have still got to do the intersection upgrades, we have still got to do the utility upgrades, we have still got the agency costs, we have still got the diversions of ACTION, we have still got the diversions of all the other intersections and road works; yet it is a steal.” In addition, they still refuse to say what is the embedded finance rate and they still refuse to say what the operating and maintenance costs are going to be.

If you add 20 or 25 years of operations, finance and construction, you are going to get up to a pretty big figure. That is why this is an intergenerational liability that this government is landing on Canberrans. That is the real tragedy of this. This is not a folly confined to this administration; it is a folly they want to impose on future generations of Canberrans. It is a 20 or 25-year deal, yet they will not wait four months to get the mandate they should be seeking. It is wrong. It is absolutely wrong.

We firmly believe that the project should be put on hold until after the election. Mr Corbell and Mr Rattenbury seem to think there is some impurity in asking voters what they think, asking taxpayers whether they want to pay for it. They seem to think it is actually immoral or unethical to actually put an issue to the voters. We firmly believe that the people of Canberra should be the determiners of policy in this place.

We will not be supporting Mr Rattenbury’s amendment. We think, once again, it is another Labor lite amendment from a very tight coalition government. It simply goes to more hiding of this government’s project. Therefore, we will be voting against it, and we call on the government to finally come clean with what the final costs to taxpayers will be for this project.

Question put:

That Mr Rattenbury’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

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