Page 3043 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 August 2008
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Mrs Dunne: It’s two lanes and you promised four!
MR HARGREAVES: All right; there are two facts you need to know. Fact No 1—you didn’t build it. Fact No 2—we did build it. Game over. There are no prizes for second, Mr Speaker.
Mr Pratt: Fact No 3—
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt!
MR HARGREAVES: The question that Mr Pratt asked is: would it not have been cheaper to have done it at the time? Yes, of course it would have been. But what happened? What about the costs? Let us go back and have a bit of a think about it. My memory is that there was a bit of a kerfuffle about the eastern and western alignment, and the Liberal Party’s federal mates were brought into it, which delayed the project. Then, was it not true that we also had the “save the fridge” people—that is, the Save the Ridge people? Whenever you say things like that you have to pay copyright. The original came from a member of the Assembly staff, and I pay credit to that staff member. In our valedictory I might tell you which one it was.
Those delays cost us about $20 million or thereabouts—yes, about $20 million. Part of the reason was the increase in costs in the ensuing period. Mr Pratt, of course, does not know everything, otherwise he would not ask silly questions. He would know that those machines, the graders et cetera, over there on the road, the big yellow ones—you know, the Tonka toys, just like in your sandpit, Mr Pratt—use 70 litres of diesel an hour. In the period while these guys were stoking up people and saying, “We want it on the other alignment,” or “You really should put a tunnel through O’Connor ridge,” costs were raking up. Diesel went up by 17 per cent. It cost us $20 million.
Mr Pratt: Simon’s tunnel!
MR HARGREAVES: Is that right? It is in your previous budget documents. Mr Speaker, in the 2000-01 budget documents put up by Brendan’s government under that illustrious Treasurer, Mr Humphries, they were going to build two tunnels! The question is: would it have been cheaper? Of course it would have been—it was six years ago. But if those people over there had not delayed the project, we would have had it done by now. As it turns out, for months now, you have been able to get onto Gungahlin Drive and go all the way through. You could not do that when those people were in office.
I said to the people of Gungahlin, “I will deliver you a road,” and I did. It was done. This government promised to deliver a road, and the people got a road. What did they get out of those people opposite? Nothing—just promises after promises after promises; delay after delay after delay. That cost us time, and that time wastage cost us money, and that wastage of money cost us having to build the thing into double lanes. Provision is now being made for that.
You guys can use the highway; you can go up the GDE and you can watch it emerge out of the ground. But, guess what, Mr Speaker: they are spewing because it does not
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