Page 1050 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The importance of good infrastructure planning in the ACT.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (3.43): This is a very important MPI. It is very important because what we have had over the time that the Labor Party have been in office is an ongoing litany, a continuing litany, an endless litany of the failure to deliver their capital works budget and capital works projects on time, on budget and on scope.
Indeed, on Friday Mr Hanson managed to extract details that show yet again that another significant project will now be delayed, in this case because of indecision by the Chief Minister and health minister on what should go ahead. You would think that when the government consider putting a budget proposal in to the capital works budget, they would have done the work to determine what would go ahead and, more importantly, the reasons why it should go ahead. And if something is changed, there should be significant reasons for it not to go ahead in the time frame that has been listed.
It is very interesting, Mr Assistant Speaker, to go to the mid-year review, the budget review for 2013. At page 14 the government now calls it “re-profiling”. It is a lovely word, re-profiling. It means “we have not delivered yet again, so we’re going to re-profile”. The third paragraph says:
The re-profiling exercise has resulted in $249.4 million in net capital expenditure being moved from 2012-13. As part of the re-profiling exercise $40.6 million of project savings were identified.
Let me read that again:
The re-profiling exercise has resulted in $249.4 million …
A quarter of a billion dollars of expenditure has basically been delayed or removed because this government cannot deliver. And it is because they do not have a commitment to delivering high quality capital works on time, on budget and on scope that this happens and we come back to this issue again and again. Ultimately, this is a question about leadership, and this matter rests on the leadership of the Chief Minister and her cabinet.
When this government makes a decision for the future of our cities—in this case of infrastructure—what do we get? We do not get delivery, we get massive delays and blowouts, not to mention decisions based on convenience.
What did we discover on Friday? On Friday we discovered that the government have frozen the $41 million budgeted for the design work of a new block to replace the 10-storey tower at the Canberra Hospital. The Chief Minister’s excuses were “might be more appropriate for the government to be expanding services at Calvary hospital” and “not convinced that it should go ahead at this point in time”. Surely that work was done before the money was listed. Indeed, this is one of the projects that has been re-profiled. If you look at the spread of the $41 million over the years, they had the $41 million spent by the end of the 2013-14 year. That money has now been pushed out to 2014-15, with $21 million next year and $18 million in the year following.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video