Page 1854 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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view and will of taxpayers. One thing we should be able to agree on is that capital metro is of course a massive project. At $707 million to construct, it is huge. It is the most expensive contract signed by the ACT government and, therefore, it deserves to be released in full.
When the project was first announced, a motion passed in this Assembly that stated:
(a) the Government is committed to a high level of transparency and will progressively release information about the Capital Metro project as it is developed;
In November of 2014, Mr Corbell said the government is committed to delivering this project in an open and transparent way. Minister Corbell repeated himself in March of this year. In reply to a question on notice, he stated:
The ACT Government is committed to being open and transparent about the project.
Following on from this motion and Mr Corbell’s statements, the government should release the contract if they really do want to reflect what they have said in the past about transparency. Nothing could be more openly transparent than releasing this document in full.
It is not unusual for governments to release light rail contracts. The contract to build the Gold Coast light rail system, often cited by this government, was released over two years before the system became operational. This is a precedent the government should follow. On the back of the Gold Coast experience, I do not see how it could be plausibly argued that the release of the contract could jeopardise the project.
The Greens of course should be supporting my motion today in that they claim to be a party of transparency. It is ACT Greens policy that:
… a healthy democracy requires transparent practices in all aspects of government.
Of course, to achieve this policy the ACT government advocates “open and transparent access to government documents.” Indeed, this is a position that has been advocated by Mr Rattenbury. In 2013 he said:
The Greens are committed to improving the transparency of government, and I have no doubt it is in the government's best interest to provide more information to the community.
What could be more open and more transparent than releasing the biggest contract ever signed by an ACT government?
While Mr Rattenbury might claim to support transparency, he has always voted to suppress information when it comes to the light rail project. Voting against the release of the contract would, of course, be inconsistent with the views supposedly espoused by the Greens. Around the country, the Greens are calling for the release of contracts
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