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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-05-14 Daily Xml
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O-BAHN EXTENSION

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:28): Can the Minister for Transport advise on what basis he costed the O-Bahn extension at $61 million if he is yet to decide the route, the style of transit corridor, or whether major earthmoving works are required, and will he release those costings?

The Hon. P.F. CONLON (Elder—Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Energy) (14:28): It is my understanding of the outline work that was undertaken—of course, I have no doubt that you will start abusing this organisation, too. It has been done by GHD, who have identified the options for us. None of them, except, of course, the leader, has been in government, so maybe that is the difficulty and why we have to explain just what is necessary to do. We engaged GHD—it would have cost us money, I assume—to do some studies on options for us. They have identified some options. We worked with the commonwealth on that, to present a good business case to them.

Of course, the cost of the project depends on what you do with it. For example, the Hackney Bridge is a major component. Once the work is outlined and the options are identified, and you have a number that you can convince the commonwealth to fund—what we tend to do is ask for as much as we can get, which we think is the right approach—we then go out.

For example, yesterday, I spoke to Neil Smith from Torrens Transit, which is the company that drives the buses along the O-Bahn. Of course, they are very pleased with it but they would like to be involved in the discussions as to how it might work. Yesterday, I very briefly saw the Lord Mayor of Adelaide and indicated to him that we will have to talk to the Adelaide City Council about what we do.

So, the member for Morphett may begin to understand why then you do some work and develop options, but I would simply suggest it would have been rather presumptuous and foolhardy of us to talk to these parties before we had secured funding and a final decision from the commonwealth. We may have raised expectations and looked rather foolish if it did not come off, so we have done everything exactly as it should be.

I point out that the options we have developed for this, on the basis of GHD's work, are, I suggest, rather better developed than the options that the Leader of the Opposition has developed for the RAH, apparently one of which will be picked now before an election. Of course, it was going to be after an election, after consulting people. He was trying to kick the ball as far into touch as he possibly could, but now it will be before.

I look forward to seeing the well-developed work that is being done on those options. I am pretty confident that ours will be better. I am still waiting to see the consultants' costing on one of his football stadiums. Remember what the consultant said about the earlier one. I suspect those costings were quite possibly by the same people who supplied other documents to the Leader of the Opposition, and they probably made as much sense.

Can I just assure the member for Morphett that is the proper process: you develop a case; you use a world-recognised accredited firm to assist you; you show the commonwealth the merit of it and the benefit of it; they make a decision, and then we have to talk to other parties involved.

One of the things I do not want to do is go out with three different options and upset perhaps three different groups when we would like to finalise the one, and then just upset whoever we upset with that one. No doubt, we will upset someone, including the opposition, because they hate it when we do things. That is what you do—

Ms Chapman: Can't you answer the question?

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Sorry? That is not a good enough answer? What is it that the deputy leader would like me to tell—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: How did I cost it? Okay, I will go through this again. We employed GHD to look at a number of options. We put some costings about what implementing those options would be. We put a business case to the commonwealth. We asked as much as we thought we might get out of the commonwealth, to be frank, because you can always do a more expensive option on anything. Now, on the basis of that work, we are going to have discussions with the other parties interested and finalise an affordable option out of the work that has already been done. I have great difficulty understanding what I have not answered and greater difficulty understanding why that is not the correct process.

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