Page 110 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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MS LE COUTEUR: We actually talked to the government, Mr Coe. That is how we learnt that. I am not quite sure how else we were going to learn it, Mr Coe. Apart from the government, I am not sure who else you think would have been—
Mr Coe: Is it in writing?
MS LE COUTEUR: We do have information in writing from the government, yes. But I am not sure who else was going to give us information on the engineering costings if you did not think it was going to be the government.
I will admit that one of my skills is not road construction or traffic engineering, but the government have said to us things which seem quite reasonable. First, they went back to the engineers who were doing the existing work and the engineers said no, with the information they have at present, they think it would cost in the order of $5 million or $6 million more. And they went through the reasons for this. They talked about the bridge and the need for strengthening for that. They talked about the alluvial soil and they talked about the fact that to get really detailed costings, unfortunately, it was going to cost significant amounts of money. It was going to cost in the order of $800,000. I can quite understand the government’s reluctance to spend $800,000 on something when it is not clear that it should be proceeded with.
Talking about money, I would like to note again standing order 200, which basically says the government has the role of making appropriations, money bills. I appreciate that the motion in November was not a money bill but it in effect had some of that in it when it became obvious that it was going to cost quite an amount of money. So on that basis we felt it was appropriate that the minister should report back to the Assembly as a whole about the cost of the Assembly’s proposal and the government’s response to this. Mr Barr did so this morning and I think that was the appropriate thing for him to do. The Assembly did pass a motion and it is now the duty of the executive, where possible, to fulfil the desire of the Assembly. And it was appropriate to report back.
Getting to this in more detail, yes, the reason we have not pushed for more detailed engineering reports is that it does not seem clear to us that that is the best way of spending an additional million dollars. It would seem that there are some real issues with the alternative route and that, while the costing may not be $5 million, it is clear that it will be a considerable amount of money. And there is no real evidence to suggest that it will be substantially less. It could be more, for all we know. Look at the Cotter Dam. That blew out in cost.
Mr Seselja: Another reason not to trust them on costings, isn’t it?
MS LE COUTEUR: Exactly. It is a reason for us to feel that things go up rather than down, I am afraid, in these sorts of costings.
Another major issue that we were not aware of at the time was that the alternative route would trigger an EIS. As you would appreciate, the Greens do not lightly agree to things which are going to trigger EISs, because EISs, as I said this morning, always lead to mitigation of environmental impacts. They never lead to a situation of avoiding the impact entirely. To do that, we have to keep the original road alignment.
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