Page 1856 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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interest is capitalising. That is what is happening right now. For every day of work that goes by, interest is capitalising. By choosing not to pay as we go, the interest gets capitalised. It is as simple as that. You cannot have work done now and not pay a cent until 2019 and claim that we are not going to be paying for that.
Overall, the service payment to be made by the ACT government to fund light rail for the 2019-20 financial year will be $55.4 million. This is a payment the government will make for 20 years and, of course, it will be increasing. This is $55.4 million a year which is not going to better local services for Canberrans. And this is just the information we are aware of. What other costs are included in this contract? How do we know that there are not many other costs that are, in effect, back-ended as part of this contract? How do we know there are not poison pills at the five, 10, 15 or 20-year mark of this contract? We simply do not know. All that we have before us at present is Minister Corbell’s press release and the outyears for this budget.
This apparently is just stage one of the project. The Chief Minister and the Labor Party apparently support further stages of light rail. Mr Rattenbury and the Greens support the light rail network plan, as does, of course, Minister Corbell. We are not talking about $55.4 million a year when we look at the light rail network plan; we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year to essentially replace the red and blue rapids.
Yesterday’s budget papers give us a glimpse into the real cost of light rail. It showed us that the service payments for the first full year of light rail operations will be around $55 million including interest. Of course Canberrans deserve to see this contract; it is the right thing to do. They deserve to know just how much this intergenerational debt is. They deserve to know just how much money they have to pay as part of this commitment, this foolish and selfish commitment that this government has entered into just five months before an election.
In moving this motion, I call upon the government to release the contract in full so that at least Canberrans know the full liability of what this government has signed up to.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Capital Metro, Minister for Health, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change) (4.24): Once again, I welcome the opportunity to talk about the importance of this project, which will help secure Canberra’s future as a city which is investing in infrastructure that will make a long-term difference to its growth, development and transport tasks.
I am very pleased to advise the Assembly that, as I have said repeatedly in this place over a number of years now, the government will publish the capital metro contract summary and the project agreement. This has always been the government’s position. There is nothing new or unusual in the government stating that. I have said it numerous times in question time in this place.
Mr Coe has stated that the government is yet to release the contract detail for the project, and that is correct. We will release the detail in accordance with the
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