Page 3479 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 August 2008
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How silly can you get? There were four sites, apparently, then. There was one in the industrial area of Hume where, I must admit, we knew we would get a power station. Most people thought a power station was a great idea which would provide employment for the territory and a really good backup system—fantastic. Everyone thought it would be in Hume. The government did not pick the obvious site there. It did not even pick a site down the road, which at least was away from the residential area, because there were Indigenous artefacts there. It is interesting that it used that as an excuse for not going to that site but then, suddenly and conveniently, they were removed and that site, I understand, has now been offered for sale.
We then had the fiasco of there being no independent health impact study until the government was forced into it. Then, a few weeks later, it abandoned it. The people who were involved in that study were complaining that their expertise was not going to be used. So there has been fiasco after fiasco. Again, blind Freddy could have told you that you do not suddenly foist on people, in a suburb where there already had been a problem about four years ago, another whopping big piece of infrastructure, with no environmental impact statement until the government was forced into it.
We have now had a downscaling of the project. I am not sure what has happened to the idea regarding Williamsdale because, in a way, it makes a lot of sense. Why wasn’t that announced as the site to start with? What was the problem there? Was that some sort of afterthought? It makes a fair bit of sense. There are a few farmhouses around. The gas pipeline that comes up from the Victorian coast actually goes through there and then hives off towards Hoskinstown before it goes back to the coast. So one would think that site would have a hell of a lot of merit. There is nothing much around there. There might be a few farmhouses; you might have to do a little bit of land acquisition there. I think there is the disused Williamsdale quarry in the area. Surely, you would not have the same problems you would face with what the government did. Also, there would be no need to do too much with the gas line because you are pretty well right on top of it, from what I understand. That would save costs as well.
The power station was not amongst the weights hanging around the Chief Minister’s neck as he stands on those election starting blocks, but perhaps it should have been proudly hanging there, along with the GDE, as well as the bushfire and school closures. Earlier, I mentioned this year’s budget and the government’s building the future program—a program worth $1 billion over five years. That is supposedly for new infrastructure projects and is in addition to the government’s other capital works activities. Of most interest is the fact that the actual spend is scaled down from the very ambitious target that the government set itself for 2007-08 of $430 million, of which less than half had been spent by the end of the third quarter. For the 2008-09 budget, it is $250 million, or just over half of the budget for 2007-08. So despite all the trumpeting, this government has actually scaled back its capital works program. Perhaps it, too, has suddenly realised its incapacity to deliver that. The Chief Minister, in his statement heralding the building the future program, said:
Infrastructure is an essential input to almost all economic activities. For state and local governments, infrastructure is an important vehicle for delivering services to the community. Its timely provision and optimal utilisation not only increase economic efficiency, but also serve the social needs of the community.
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