Page 808 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2016
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provisions. Estimated financial costs and financing rates could also be hidden. Only by releasing the full light rail contract financials can the government confidently provide expected operating maintenance and financing costs for this very important project.
We believe the full release of the financials of the contract will also allow for Canberrans to properly scrutinise this contract. We will know who is responsible for the works, when those works are to be completed and what the expected works and costs are going to be. We will know what the ACT government will complete in house with taxpayers’ money outside the current estimated $698 million construction cost. Any so-called poison pill that the government looks to include in the light rail contract should also have to be disclosed.
Madam Speaker, the government will claim they are being open and transparent when it comes to light rail. They will argue they have been open and transparent in the past regarding light rail so there is no need to release the full light rail contract financials. No statement could be further from the truth. The history of capital metro is filled with the government’s fondness for rhetoric, less so about the facts. It started, of course, in 2012 when the government claimed they had an election mandate to build light rail. Of course, election policy No 87 on the ACT Treasury website clearly states that just $30 million was committed to a feasibility study.
The government continued their rhetoric after the 2012 election when they failed to identify a reason for proceeding with light rail. We know it was to win the support of Mr Rattenbury, but they would not say it. Instead they came up with a number of excuses, all of which contradicted the government’s own study into light rail and bus rapid transit. Of course, these excuses led Infrastructure Australia to state that the case for favouring light rail has not been strongly made, as well as the Productivity Commission commenting that the ACT government’s decision to proceed with light rail appears to be an example of where the results of the cost-benefit analysis have been ignored without a valid explanation.
The government rhetoric continued when they released the capital metro full business case. A month after the release of the business case Minister Corbell noted:
The government are committed to delivering this project in an open and transparent way and we underlined this commitment by releasing the full capital metro business case at the end of October this year.
The business case was, of course, a decent analysis of the project, but it was hardly compelling evidence to proceed with the project. To quote respected economist Dr Leo Dobes, there is still a disturbing lack of facts on the table when it comes to the economic modelling underpinning the business case. Professor Phil Lewis from the University of Canberra also said:
The cost-benefit analysis that’s been done has not been very transparent.
The government claims they have been transparent and open on light rail. It is a shame their record simply does not indicate this. If the government cannot release all
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