Page 1511 - Week 04 - Thursday, 25 March 2010
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that is, the day that Actew and the ministers were recalled—
the project cost for the Cotter Dam was still listed as $145 million on the ACTEW Corporation website.
Actew Corporation did not respond very pleasantly to this being pointed out to them, but it is an oversight. It is a small and trifling oversight, but it is a symptom of what is going wrong with the management of our water security projects.
I should draw members’ attention to the recommendations in relation to the water security projects. The members of the public accounts committee have canvassed the issues particularly well, but I would like to draw members’ attention to paragraph 5.57, because there was considerable discussion in the committee and elsewhere about the alliance model and the extent to which there was padding in the costing to allow the members of the alliance to walk away with substantial profits at the end of the deal—meaning that ACT taxpayers, through their water rates, will be paying yet again.
We discussed this here yesterday. As a result of the cost blow-out in the dams, our already high water rates are expected to increase—just because of the blow-out in the cost of the dam—by another $100 a year. That is irrespective of everything else. In the hearings on 18 February, I asked the minister about the issues in relation to the difference—when the cost of the dam was $240 million, and it became $360 million, how much of that was profit being taken by the alliance partners. The answer is very instructive. It is very instructive because it is counter to all the principles of openness and accountability. The Treasurer said:
I am advised that ACTEW cannot contractually release information about the margins without the consent of its alliance partners, as the information is considered to be ‘commercial in confidence’.
This was a government that said, when they were in opposition nine years ago, that they would not hide behind commercial in confidence. But when we come to the largest and most expensive infrastructure project in the history of the territory, the one where the cost management has been the most atrocious—and the burden of that will be borne by ACT and Queanbeyan water users for years into the future—we cannot work out, we cannot inquire into, just how much profit is in this for the alliance partners, because that is commercial in confidence.
The people of the ACT are footing the bills here, and the people of the ACT deserve to know the answer to that question. If the alliance partners have nothing to hide, they would be forthcoming about that. The mere fact that this is treated as commercial in confidence—something that the people who are building the dam, who are paying for the building of the dam, cannot know about—shows that the alliance partners have something to hide and that Actew has something to hide in relation to this.
The Liberal opposition, the Canberra Liberals, will be pursuing the matters in relation to the costing of this dam and the extraordinary blow-out in this project and other projects until we can get all the answers. If that takes years, we will continue to pursue it, because the people of the ACT and the people in Queanbeyan who are
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