Re: Victorian State Election
Reply #38 –
It's interesting, I think you'll find the $1B is/was offset by or eliminated by other contracts.
No company that size would deliberately exclude themselves from future offerings that might add up to trillions, by taking a short term billion now!
So I doubt if the state has ever really paid that money, or if that amount ever really existed, and nobody will chase it as long as the opportunity to join a tender remains. Given GDP adjustments, and all the other contracts since, they have probably already got it well and truly covered!
That is not how money is wasted, a better example of waste is the news that one of the more recently completed new stations now has to be renovated for a fourth time. The first time the plans did not include skyrail, they had only just finished an upgrade when skyrail was announced. The second time the platform was built in the wrong position, there was an unsafe gap between some trains and the platform. The third time it was too short, it didn't fit the new trains on a future service and has to be extended! All up the first rebuild cost $30M, and by the time they have completed the fourth cycle it will allegedly cost more than $600M for a single train station that half a decade ago just needed a polish up! All this in the space of one term!