Page 2123 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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on time and on budget?” They have not asked those questions, and this minister is now tied to that flawed plan.
But let us look again at the delivery. You can say: “This time, trust us. We will deliver infrastructure this time.” Let us look at the last 10 years. Nothing epitomises this government’s performance more than the Gungahlin Drive extension. The Gungahlin Drive extension is the bane of the existence of so many Canberrans who have been forced to suffer through a decade of bumbling and ineptitude, the likes of which has never, ever been seen in self-government. To deliver this project—of course it is not yet delivered—eventually, maybe, sometime in the future, after more than a decade, to have delivered one lane and no sooner have to turn around and put the people of Gungahlin and the people of Belconnen through it all again as they decided, “Yes, perhaps it would have been a better idea to duplicate it in the first place, to have had two lanes immediately,” is emblematic of this government and their delivery in infrastructure. The GDE epitomises ACT Labor.
But we do not have to just look at the GDE. There are other aspects. We have seen the GDE bridge collapse. We have seen the Cotter Dam blowing out from $140 million to $363 million. We have seen the ESA headquarters blowing out from $13 million to $76 million and we have seen what happened when the first storm hit the headquarters—$13 million to $76 million. These are not small numbers. Canberrans pay for these large numbers. We have seen the emergency services sheds, the fire sheds, the $800,000 shed where the fire trucks cannot fit. They cannot open their doors. We have seen the $5 million on FireLink, the $5 million on the busway, things that were not delivered at all—$10 million just thrown away on those two projects alone.
There is also the hospital car park. There are the Molonglo ponds and the north Canberra ponds, which is now blowing out to $43 million. The Googong pipeline is blowing out from $96 million to $156 million. Something different needs to be done here. I think that after a decade perhaps it is time to do something different on infrastructure delivery. And we have not seen any evidence of it yet.
We do need a real infrastructure plan. We do need an independent infrastructure commissioner. We do need to actually take it out of this cycle that has been handled so badly by ACT Labor where infrastructure is never delivered on time and on budget. It is virtually non-existent. Simon Corbell had to spend days trawling through the records in his department to find something that had been delivered on time and on budget.
Something needs to change here. That is why we say we do need to do things differently, that is why we have got to plan, through Infrastructure Canberra, to do things differently. It is critically important. I am told that in relation to the north Canberra ponds the blow-out was to $31 million. I correct the record. It is difficult to keep up with all of their blow-outs. It is difficult to keep up.
Housing affordability is spoken about. Let us look at the record on housing affordability. Rents are now almost the highest in the country. They have gone up by around 70 per cent. House prices have got out of the reach of young Canberra families. And what is this Chief Minister doing about it? She is going to put in charge the guy
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