Page 4075 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 16 Sept 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
the cost blow-outs of territory-owned corporations. This government refuse to acknowledge their responsibilities as major shareholders. Had they chosen to honour this responsibility, we may not be facing the massive cost blow-outs that we currently are.
Let me remind the government again of the history—the history that they must take responsibility for. The government denied for years the need for increased water security of any sort. In 2005 the Chief Minister said:
If we can put it off forever, what a fantastic achievement by the ACT government that would be.
That is from Hansard of 21 September 2005.
The bottom line is that the government can claim responsibility for failures and successes equally as the major shareholders. There is a litany of cost blow-outs and debacles associated with territory-owned corporations for which the government must uphold its shareholder responsibilities and take responsibility. Take this comment by Mr Stanhope:
If we can put it off forever, what a fantastic achievement by the ACT government that would be.
Chief Minister, I would hardly call it a fantastic achievement. Even the Chief Minister would have to admit that it is a frightening achievement. And it did not take forever—just four years.
In these last few weeks our attention has been drawn to the massive cost blow-out of the Cotter Dam project—the massive $243 million cost blow-out of the Cotter Dam project. In 2005 Actew estimated that the cost of the dam would be about $120 million. In 2007 the Chief Minister announced the major water security projects and the figure magically turned into $145 million. This year, on 18 May, the Managing Director of Actew Corporation told the 2009-10 budget estimates committee:
We are working on an estimate of costs that we warned in that report could be 30 per cent higher than that again. I do think it is going to be something that the Actew board, which I am very interested in—is just trying to understand where the movement in costs occur across these major projects and taking it forward to understand and to work through where the answers are and, if there are deficiencies, where the deficiencies were in terms of the planning process.
That is from the estimates Hansard at page 177.
Seven days after this, on 30 May, the cost had gone up yet again, to $246 million. And just three months later, on 3 September 2009, the announcement was made that the cost would now be $363 million. That is more than three times the first costing in just four years.
And after years of delay, all of a sudden we see in the space of months the planning minister use his call-in powers to get the Cotter Dam project underway. Then there is
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .