Federal Member for Herbert, Phillip Thompson, is demanding answers after recent revelations that the cost of the Haughton Pipeline Stage 2 project has blown out to $500M, up from an initial budget of $179.6M.
New Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie has disclosed that the cost for the second stage of the construction of the Haughton Pipeline project would now exceed half a billion dollars, according to a Treasury briefing.
This comes after Federal Member for Herbert, Phillip Thompson, revealed a previous cost blowout of $240M in a speech to Federal Parliament in July of this year. The information came from several whistleblowers in the Townsville City Council at the time, leading Mr Thompson to call for an investigation into the Council and State Labor Government’s mishandling of the project.
Mr Thompson said this latest revelation showed Labor’s legacy would continue to burden Townsville locals for years to come.
“In July I wrote to the three Labor State MPs and the Labor Minister demanding what they knew about this blowout and when – but they refused to answer,” he said.
“Only now that the LNP is in Government, we’ve found out that Treasury expects a further $80M blowout of this project, and the Townsville City Council refuses to comment.
“Why are we only learning about this now? The Council must come clean and provide a full explanation for the cost blowout.”
One of the key commitments Phillip Thompson made before being elected in 2019 was $200M in Federal funding to complete the Haughton Pipeline, which was refused by the former Labor-led Council and Labor State Government due to a lie about how the funding might affect its GST allocation.
“The refusal by former Mayor Jenny Hill and the Labor State Government to accept federal funding due to political games has now cost our community hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr Thompson said.
“The price of this project has gone from $180M to half a billion dollars, and it is taxpayers who are having to foot the bill.”
With the new LNP State Government led by Premier David Crisafulli in place, Mr Thompson said that addressing this cost blowout must be one of their key priorities.
“I have spoken to Deputy Premier Bleijie and will be expecting our State LNP Government to conduct a thorough investigation into the reasons for this cost blowout, making the completion of the Haughton Pipeline a top priority,” he said.
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