Page 1903 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012
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This will come to define ACT Labor’s time in office. It covers two of the things that will define this government’s time in office. One is that they simply cannot build things. They cannot build things anywhere near on time and anywhere near on budget—whether that is the prison, whether that is the Gungahlin Drive extension, or whether that is the numerous other projects on which they have spent millions and then not delivered and pulled away from, like the government office building or the Belconnen to Civic busway. This government has made an art form of wasting our money because it cannot control project costs and because it cannot deliver projects on time and on budget.
The other thing this government will be defined by here today is imposing additional cost burdens on Canberra families. This government has become a master at passing on costs to Canberra families and adding extra burdens. This $285 million cost blow-out will mean hundreds of dollars extra for Canberra families on their water bills. Canberrans are paying triple for water now than they were when this government came to office. It has gone up by 200 per cent. In that time, inflation has gone up by around 35 per cent. Wage inflation has been around 45 per cent, yet this government has seen water bills go up by 200 per cent. Now, as a result of this cost blow-out, Canberra families will once again be forced to pay more for the essentials of life no less. For the essentials of life we continue to be forced to pay more.
There are a lot of outstanding questions. Mrs Dunne has outlined just how badly the government has handled this in terms of the timing. But there are additional questions as to their oversight and how they have actually controlled costs along the way. It is extraordinary to me that even before the floods, our absolute highest cost ever of $363 million had already been breached. What has happened with the management of this project and the management of costs? We will need further answers and much more detail than this government has been prepared to give to satisfy ourselves that there has not been a monumental waste of money in aspects of this project and how it has been managed.
Canberrans deserve much better than this. They deserve answers on this. They certainly deserve answers when they are going to be forced for generations to pay hundreds of dollars extra per year because of this government’s incompetence. We need those answers. We need far more detail than is being given. We need to know, line by line. We cannot trust this government in their spending programs. They have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, and in coming weeks we will be pushing for more detail than this government have been prepared to give. If they are not prepared to give that, it will simply demonstrate that they do not believe their management of this project stacks up, that they do not believe they can actually defend the way they have managed this project.
The community deserves more answers than it is getting at the moment. At the moment, all they know is they are going to be paying a lot more because Labor cannot manage. We know that. Now it is time we actually got to the bottom of just how badly this project has been managed from start to finish and why Canberrans will have to pay so much more for our water than would otherwise have been the case.
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