Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry, Procurement and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Minchin, the Minister for Finance and Administration. Is the minister aware of comments by the member for Eden-Monaro, Mr Nairn, on ABC Radio on 23 August that the lease on the joint headquarters at Bungendore would ultimately cost taxpayers more than $1.2 billion? Isn’t this new estimate of cost six times the project’s original budget of $200 million when it was first announced in the 2001 federal election campaign? Is it also the case that construction work on the headquarters, which was meant to be finished next year, still has not started, five years after it was first announced by the government? Is the minister able to clarify precisely when construction work will finally get under way? Can the minister also guarantee that taxpayers will not have to pay for further cost blow-outs on this project, considering the government has only released costings for the first year of the lease?