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FEDERATION SQUARE: MINISTER, NOT MAJOR PROJECTS OFFICE, SHOULD GO

News Release - Sunday 24 September, 2000

The Minister for Major Projects, John Pandazopolous, must accept responsibility for the $140 million cost blowout at Federation Square and should step down from involvement in the project, the Shadow Minister for Major Projects, Robert Clark, said today.

"Almost twelve months after coming to office, the Minister suddenly claims that he has become aware of cost blowouts which have taken the cost of the project from $262 million as at the change of government last year to around $400 million now.

"If that is true, just what has the Minister been doing over the past 12 months when he has been responsible for the project?

"Even on his own version of events, the Minister has shown a complete inability to handle his role in Federation Square, and it should be him, rather than the Office of Major Projects, that is removed from any future involvement in Federation Square.

"But in fact the Minister's responsibility for the problems at Federation Square goes far further than inaction and neglect - it has been the Minister's own actions that have caused the vast bulk of the cost overruns."

Mr Clark said that cost and delay at Federation Square have been caused by:

- the Minister's and Premier's intervention on the shards issue, which had taken up hundreds of hours of design and management time and distracted attention from management of the project

- hounding out of office the person principally responsible for the Square - project director, Mr Damien Bonnice - over his exposure of possible irregularities in the decision to scrap the western shard

- loss of potential investors and tenants at the project due to the scrapping of the shard, at the cost of millions of dollars, as the Government was warned in writing by the Chairman of the Federation Square Management Company, Mr Peter McMahon, prior to its decision to scrap the shard

- a six month delay until March 2000 in appointing a Chief Executive Officer to the Federation Square Management Company, after the Government rejected the CEO nominee put forward by the company's board at the time of last year's election.

"The Office of Major Projects has been doing its best to save the Government from the consequences of its own incompetence. The Minister's attempt to blame the Office for the problems he himself has caused continues Labor's disgraceful practice of blaming the workers for the bosses' mistakes, just as it tried to blame VenCorp for the Government's mishandling of power restrictions, and the WorkCover Authority over the Government's bungled premium increase model."