Page 4132 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
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announcement that light rail will accommodate bicycles so that people can use multiple sustainable modes on their trip, and so the catchment for light rail is wider. Mr Coe responded negatively to this idea. I cannot believe the Liberal Party’s opposition to light rail is so blinkered that they cannot even acknowledge when positive elements of the project are coming forward—one that has clearly proven to be popular with potential users of the service.
I will address briefly some of the specific issues in Mr Coe’s motion today. Firstly, I refer to the issue of the benefit-cost ratio, which I note Minister Corbell spoke about as well. The BCR for the project is assessed by the business case as 1.2. Mr Coe refers to that as “just 1.2”, as though this implies that this is a terrible result or somehow that it is too low. Opponents have even taken to calling this BCR marginal. We have heard Minister Corbell make a number of comparisons today regarding that BCR, and putting it in perspective. I had certainly intended to make some similar observations, because it clearly is a positive result. In the interests of time I will keep my remarks in this area short, but it is worth looking at what some other jurisdictions are doing, including in Liberal state government jurisdictions around the country.
The Melbourne Metro project, for example, is high on Infrastructure Australia’s project list and, initially supported by the Victorian Liberal government, also had a BCR of 1.2. In 2012-13 the Liberal government in Victoria sanctioned $50 million for the planning and development of the Metro rail project. Then this year Denis Napthine decided to axe the project and replace it with a different project, the Melbourne rail link. And what is the BCR for that project? Well, we actually do not even know, because Mr Napthine has not released a business case for that project.
This contrasts to the approach here in the ACT where the government has been willing to show the highest level of transparency, which is certainly something very important to the Greens, and we are happy for scrutiny of this project. Therefore the government has released the full business case. Governments in other jurisdictions have gone so far as battling in court to prevent the release of those documents.
Another interesting benefit-cost ratio is that of the Brisbane cross-river rail project, with a BCR of 1.34. Even the Pacific Highway corridor upgrades, supported by the New South Wales and federal governments, have a BCR of around 1.5. So this leads to an interesting question that Mr Coe might like to answer in his closing remarks: when is the BCR suddenly unsatisfactory? If it is at 1.5—which is still not two—then the Pacific Highway upgrades are no good. If it is 1.3 then Brisbane’s cross-river rail project is considered to be a flop. And if it is 1.2 then Melbourne Metro is a failure. So where is the cut-off for what is considered an acceptable BCR?
The second observation I would make is that we do not want to put too much emphasis on the BCR either. It is only one number in what should be a much broader assessment of projects. If we are to make a list of projects ranked in order by their BCR number, and then only build them in order, we would most likely have a terrible outcome for the city. Particularly with public transport, special emphasis needs to be put on multicriteria analysis. It is well documented that a BCR analysis alone, when applied to public transport projects, does not give the full picture. It is a limited means of assessing public transport. As I have said, 1.2 is a positive result, and particularly so for a public transport project, but it does need to be read in context.
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