[Greens-Media] Govt response to Cross City Tunnel inquiry: ‘consider’ recommendations in feeble guidelines revamp

[Lee Rhiannon]

 MEDIA RELEASE
1 September 2006


Govt response to Cross City Tunnel inquiry: ‘consider’ recommendations in feeble guidelines revamp

Greens MP and roads spokesperson Lee Rhiannon says the Iemma government’s formal response to the First Report of the Cross City Tunnel Inquiry, just released, gives short shift to recommendations of the inquiry.

“The government has either rejected the inquiry recommendations outright or says it will ‘consider’ the recommendations when reviewing 2001 guidelines for managing major public private partnerships.

“Last year the Auditor-General criticised these important guidelines, which cover key issues like contractual arrangements, planning approvals and public disclosure requirements, for not being mandatory and because some agencies did not consider themselves bound by them. 

“The Auditor-General recommended key aspects of the guidelines be legislated, but the government has failed to act.

“These guidelines, if and when they are revamped, will continue to be flaunted by the government as we saw with the Cross City Tunnel, without sanction.  

“The government has also shown its contempt for communities across NSW by refusing to support recommendations designed to improve community consultation.

“A strong theme of the Cross City Tunnel inquiry was the disregard for the views of communities affected by the tunnel who felt they had been ‘ignored, misinformed, and treated with indifference or even contempt’ * .

“The government has rejected the two major recommendations designed to improve consultation, declining to refer the issue of community consultation to a parliamentary inquiry.

“The government says it instead suppports Professor Richmond’s meaningless recommendation in his NSW Motorways Review that the RTA ‘develop a seamless process of consultation’, **  Ms Rhiannon said.

More information:  9230 3551, 0427 861 568

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*  p 107 of the First Inquiry Report, February 2006.
** The RTA, in conjunction with the relevant parties to a PPP contract, should develop a seamless process of consultation and stakeholder management through all phases of a project. Depending on the project stage, the RTA should either directly manage these processes or
coordinate their implementation. Such processes should target an appropriate balance in the involvement of general community, stakeholder, householder and road user groups.