A dam at any cost!
Following the independent arbiter, Sir Lawrence Street’s report recommending the release of ‘document No.9’ as it was in the public interest, Hunter Water Corp. has withdrawn its claim of privilege, making the memo publicly available. The document exposes the complete lack of planning and analysis before the 13 November 2006 announcement of Tillegra Dam. One of 4 water infrastructure ideas worthy of consideration it was put to the Iemma government with a cost that had “not been robustly quantified” but was “likely to be in the order of $250 million”. Further, the original DA submitted by HWC to the Department of Planning in November 2007 had 200 construction jobs and 5 permanent jobs. Now it said to cost $477M and create 1850 jobs??? The final design might be approved but hasn’t yet been costed by dam building contractors and nearly all large scale civil engineering projects, especially dams blowout in construction costs. Even Water Minister Costa is eager to water down costs.
The real cost of this dam may well be the political future of those forging ahead with an attitude of ‘a dam at any cost’!
Linda M. said:
In today’s Newcaste Herald letters section Gillian Sneddon has outlined the crisis faced by Iemma on the Thursday and Friday prior to the dam announcement. Friday had an announcement of 600 new train carriages, bringing work to Cardiff, but the good news would have been swamped by Gillian’s revelations that she had been locked out of her office after informing Parliamentary officers that she was a police witness in an investigation into child sex crimes of her then boss, Milton Orkopoulos. This was a critical claim in any circumstances but led to accusations that there were people within the Government who had known that allegations had been made against him and that the police were investigating them. That was contrary to Iemma’s ludicrous assertion that he had known nothing until the evening before the arrest. Judging by the number of people tracked by Gillian as having been told it would have had to have been the best kept secret in parliament ever! Regardless that in every other aspect of public life reporting such allegations is a statutory requirement.The scandal of that was that a Minister with serious allegations hanging over him was allowed to remain in place where he was a danger to young people in order to keep the matter quiet. In spite of the huge crisis suggested buy such a revealtion that was not addressed in the days after that disclosure and has never been addressed since. It has all been spin and cover up. I don’t know much about the dam issue but I do know far too much about how this government works and it needs to be exposed.