Integrity
Emu Swamp Dam was in the news again today, with former New South Wales supreme court judge Anthony Whealy QC from the Centre of Public Integrity quoted in The Guardian today saying:
“It is rather extraordinary that a project which seemed so promising and was carefully examined from 2019 onwards has now blotted out to double the original cost estimates.”
The “P90” estimate (meaning there was 90 per cent confidence the dam would be constructed at or below the estimated cost) in the proponent’s detailed business case for Emu Swamp Dam was $84 million. The project cost has now increased to over $210 million, 2.5 times the original estimate. You have to ask how it is possible to be so wrong, so early. More importantly, given that the project still does not have the necessary approvals and the P90 estimate has already been shown to be wildly inaccurate, there must be serious questions around the fundamentals of the business case.
Anthony Whealy QC said:
“You have to really worry about whether the public interest is well served by setting aside so much money.”
The latest estimate of $210 million now completely outweighs the proponent’s own estimate of only $139.2 million in benefits flowing from the project. This means that the project now has a benefit-cost ratio of less than one, which means that for every dollar spent by taxpayers, less than one dollar of benefit is gained by the community. Under both Federal and State financial accountability rules this means Emu Swamp Dam should not be taxpayer funded. So just on the maths, it certainly looks like the public interest is not well served by giving this project taxpayer money.
While we’re on integrity, I want to stress again that this is now $187m of taxpayer money with no transparency on who the recipients are. For such a large taxpayer gift, our government should require a full disclosure by Granite Belt Water Limited of its investors, so we can all be certain that it passes the usual probity tests. And so the local community can be certain that there are no conflicts of interest should SDRC move to proceed with this now much larger project.