Page 4924 - Week 13 - Thursday, 12 November 2009
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Early cost estimates were incomplete and did not represent the total cost to deliver the dam.
The preliminary estimates from 2005 and 2007 were not suitable for budgeting purposes but were developed as a means of comparison only.
The scale of the discrepancy between the initial and final project cost estimates indicates that a failure at multiple stages of the cost estimate process has occurred.
I repeat: a failure at multiple stages of the cost estimate process has occurred. And it goes on:
In addition to the identified failure of the initial cost estimating process to identify the total project cost, there has also been a failure by the BWA—
that is, the Bulk Water Alliance—
to adequately communicate the expected increase in project costs outside of the Alliance. This lack of clear communication, specifically to ACTEW, is a concern in terms of adherence to the principles.
These are significant findings. To hear things in the Deloitte report that suggest that there was not a strong value for money focus should be a cause for concern to all of us, because there are a number of things that we expect from governments and government-owned corporations. We expect that they will deliver infrastructure projects and services on behalf of Canberrans. We expect also that they will deliver them always with the best value for money in mind so that we do not have to pay more in taxes than we should and we do not have to pay more in charges than we should. Clearly, Deloitte have found that there are serious concerns in relation to that.
It is worth also looking at how we have got to this. You will remember that we did debate this, although we did not vote on this particular motion because it was amended. When we last brought this to the Assembly we had the situation where the government essentially said: “Trust us; we will prepare a motion.” It was a motion drafted by the government which said, “We will give you some documents and that might sort things out.” But then when we had this watered-down government motion we did not get the documents that we asked for. We did not get all of them; large parts of them were blacked out. In fact, the critical parts were blacked out.
So we have gone through a process where there has been some trust given to the government. The Greens have said: “We will trust the government. We will support their motion to give these documents.” And what has happened? We have not got the information. Then, when we have not got the information, we have had briefings. And when we have asked for some of that information in those briefings we still have not received those kinds of details—the details about why the costs that we had several years ago in a quantifiable way have grown, in what aspect have they grown and in a detailed way saying: “This is why. This is where the cost blow-outs have occurred and here is a detailed reconciliation.” Those are the answers we need.
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