ALISTAIR Coe has committed to cancel the Capital Metro project if the Liberals are elected in 2016.
The Victorian Government will pay about $340 million for cancelling the $10 billion East West Link project. That’s about three per cent. The cost might have been lower but for the outgoing Government’s “side letter” that guaranteed compensation if the project was scrapped. Three per cent of Canberra’s $800 million light rail project would be $24 million.
At the 2012 ACT election, Labor “committed to establish Canberra’s first large-scale, private-sector partnership to plan, finance and develop the first stage of a light rail network starting from Gungahlin to the city.”
It costs a lot more to “deliver” a project than to merely “establish” a partnership to “develop” that project.
But Simon Corbell (citynews.com.au, April 16) now says: “A light rail line from city to Gungahlin delivered as a public private partnership was an election commitment by ACT Labor during the last election” and that cancelling the project would cost “potentially hundreds of millions of dollars”.
According to the cost-benefit analysis results published in the ACT government’s 2012 submission to Infrastructure Australia, a busway will generate $238 million more net benefits than light rail.
This implies that any decision to cancel the light rail project in favour of a busway will provide net benefits to the ACT, unless the cancellation cost exceeds $238 million.
Leon Arundell, Downer
Don’t blame the roos
CANBERRA is the bush capital of Australia. Animals live in the bush. Humans live in suburbs and estates that take away the bush from the animals.
When humans need more room for themselves they decide there are too many animals and they have to go. They come up with all sorts of reasons why this is necessary (eg conservation cull), which makes us feel better about what we are doing. The animals, plants and indigenous people were here in Australia well before white occupation and they and nature sorted it out for centuries.
It’s man who creates the problems we have today, not the kangaroos or whales that will be one day eradicated. When will there come a time when humans, animals and the environment live in harmony, I wonder?
M Crowe, via email
Puffed up pollies
I FIND most MPs are already self-inflated to the point where the tribunal that decides their salaries should be unnecessary.
In July, 2002, MPs were paid $98,800 annually, which increased to $190,550 by July, 2012. This last sum was helped along by a one-off $44,000 rise in 2012, followed by a further boost of $5500 three months later.
Over almost the identical period, the average Australian salary moved from $44,512 to $70,230.
In my view, the system should be changed to grant MPs an increase in accordance with the CPI or inflation – whichever is the lower.
Colliss Parrett, Barton
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