Page 1675 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 May 2010
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We had agreed at our end to a TOC of $150 million.
Perhaps there was another slip of his tongue when he gave a similar impression during an interview on ABC Radio the same morning. He said:
We had taken the total out turn cost for the Murrumbidgee pipeline to the board a few days earlier than the hearing, the board had approved it and given me the delegation to spend the money.
In fact, Mr Sullivan took the total project budget of $149,793,000 to the board. That cost included the TOC of $116.7 million and a number of other cost components, such as the owner’s costs. The board approved the total project budget of $149.79 million. It also delegated and authorised Mr Sullivan to approve expenditure to an upper limit of $149.8 million for the Murrumbidgee to Googong project.
It is important to clarify these matters for the public record, and I thank the Assembly for allowing me to do so. However, it is also important to recognise that this misuse of technical terms was little more than a slip that anyone can make, even experts such as Mr Sullivan himself, who I thought would not make such slips. Indeed, it is nothing more than a diversion from the facts of the case, and these are as follows.
On 13 May 2009, the Actew board approved a total project budget of $149.8 million for the Murrumbidgee to Googong pipeline. It also authorised and delegated Mr Sullivan to approve expenditure on the project to that total project budget. The board decision paper that was dated 6 May and which records the board’s decisions noted:
The TOC has been approved by the BWA Alliance Project Management Team and the Alliance Leadership Group.
The board approved the total project budget, which included the TOC. In turn, the TOC included provisional sums of two items totalling $9.3 million. Nonetheless, the Actew board approved the total project budget, including the provisional sums. It authorised and delegated Mr Sullivan to approve expenditure, including provisional sums.
Five days later, on 18 May, knowing that his board had made the decision that I have just outlined, Mr Sullivan appeared before the estimates committee. He told the estimates committee:
The Murrumbidgee to Googong pipeline is currently under consideration by the board. While we have got a draft TOC, it has got some process to go through before it is an agreed TOC.
Madam Assistant Speaker, the statement is simply incorrect. It is false and it is misleading, and Mr Sullivan knew it was incorrect, false and misleading when he made it. There can be no mistake of semantics in that conclusion, and I await with interest the report of the privileges committee on this matter.
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