Page 1511 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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consideration when deciding to proceed with this specific project and it is described in the capital metro business case. Given the large costs of the project, it is proper that the government is able to justify the figures in their business case.
After 216 days I finally received a copy of the patronage modelling used by the government in the business case. This was after having my initial request declined on three separate occasions. Quite simply, this is not indicative of a government committed to transparency and it provides a practical case in point as to why my legislation today is required. More cynically, it is also an example of what the government is going to do in order to stop more attempts to get to the bottom of this project.
I recognise that people may have concerns with the application of this bill. As I stated, I was happy and willing to discuss this matter with government ministers. The bill was primarily about the financial ramifications of the project. I was more than happy to negotiate with members or with ministers to ensure that trade secrets or intellectual property were not captured by this bill. I stated that in my presentation speech. To this end, I offered to work with government members who had concerns about my bill. It is disappointing that neither Labor nor the Greens has taken me up on that offer. It goes to show that this is a government that is all talk, no action when it comes to transparency. Of course, Mr Rattenbury’s FOI bill, which he tabled as an exposure draft in 2013 looks like it is going to come on for a vote in the last session of this Assembly, deliberately so that he—Mr Rattenbury—will get out of any transparency related to the very bill he is putting forward.
If he were serious, there would not be a two and a half year consultation period. It would have been discussed and voted upon two years ago. Then this government would have been held to account under the very rules that Mr Rattenbury is advocating. Instead, Mr Rattenbury is strategically, in effect, getting out of adhering to the rules which he will be advocating.
There is another thing worth noting about what Mr Rattenbury contributed to this debate. He said, of course, that it was not principled to have special rules for capital metro; that it was not appropriate to have a set of provisions that applied to capital metro contracting which would be distinct from all other contracts. He said that it is not even a class of projects. It is a single project and, therefore, it was not principled to have a discussion based on a single project.
That therefore begs the question of how it is that Mr Rattenbury voted for the Planning and Development (Capital Metro) Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. This was not a principled piece of legislation; this was not even for a class of projects. This was for a single project. This was a project facilitation bill to roll out the red carpet for capital metro. There was nothing principled about it.
Mr Rattenbury can come in here and say that my bill is unprincipled because it goes by a single project. What did he do when he voted for the Planning and Development (Capital Metro) Legislation Amendment Bill 2014? Did Mr Rattenbury stand up in this place and say, “No, I can’t possibly support that. I can’t possibly support picking a single project”? Did he say, “No, projects like this should not be singled out. If
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