Page 11 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 13 February 1990
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Very Fast Train Project
DR KINLOCH: My question is directed to the Chief Minister in his role as Minister for Industry and Development. We now have the XPT, the VFT and, as a delightful letter in the Canberra Times today puts it, the FOT, the fairly ordinary train. It is said that the VFT will cost the ACT Government $30m. Is that correct?
MR KAINE: Well, Mr Speaker, I cannot speak - or I could, but I do not intend to - about the XPT and the FOT because they fall into the portfolio responsibility of my colleague, Mr Duby, but I am interested in speaking on the very fast train. I must say that, given the in-principle support that the previous Government gave to this project, I was quite astonished at the comments that have been made by certain members of the now Opposition in respect of the report which they themselves commissioned and which is now being tabled, and from which I quoted certain figures quite recently.
Assuming that the VFT does take the coastal route, the one which would run down through Jerrabomberra, the report does, in fact, talk about the possibility that there could fall to the ACT - not to the ACT Government, to the ACT - a cost of the order of $35m. If it were to take the Gungahlin route, that cost could conceivably go as high as $50m.
If the Leader of the Opposition, for example, had bothered to read the report, which is on the record and which she could have read, she would have found how those costs, or those possible costs are calculated and she would have seen that at this stage they are very tentative. At this stage, there is the question of the consortium which has to do with who pays costs at some time further downstream, and it has adopted the principle of the latecomer pays - an expression used for the VFT project. The cost of some of the things that may have to be provided across, under or around the permanent way may have to be picked up by members of the consortium - the VFT project itself - if they are the latecomers and if we put facilities in there before they come along the way.
So there is a very real question about the ultimate actual costs and, of course, as yet there has been absolutely no negotiation whatsoever about where those costs will ultimately fall. For example, the VFT railroad station, which, I suspect, is most likely to be somewhere out near the airport, will be built by the VFT consortium, which will put the VFT track through. But if we want access to the station, presumably we will have to arrange for that access to be made available. That means access roads and it may even include some parking. That kind of infrastructure will have to be provided, but it is by no means determined that even those costs will be borne by the ACT Government.
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