Thank you. I will just speak to a couple of issues that the Member has raised. First of all, he’s requested some information that I believe will be in the concession agreement in terms of who signed it, when it was signed. All the information is on the government website. There’s a lot of information there. There are probably 70 to 80 schedules that he can certainly look at and review.
He’s also mentioned the loan. The terms of the loan, it’s a really return bond and the interest rate is at 3.17 and it’s a loan that includes the outstanding principal on a yearly basis. Why did we sign such a deal on those terms? At the time that we signed it, it was an attractive deal. It was for certainty. We wanted to lock it into the long term. Unfortunately,
since then, the interest rates have dropped and it doesn’t look as attractive.
He’s also raised the question on whether it’s possible to get out, whether it’s feasible. Of course, if the interest rates go up, that would be something that could be considered but we’d still have to find a way to pay out the cost of this loan. The terms of the loan requires $8 million to be indexed on an annual basis and maybe that’s why the numbers aren’t adding up for the Member. It’s increasing all the time on an annual basis.
Whether it’s locking us in for the long term, Mr. Chairman, this was the intent, was to have this piece of public infrastructure paid for by traffic volumes that will be travelling through in that part of the Territory in the future. So that was the intent of how this project was going to be financed and it’s still the intent to have the project financed that way.
As to some of the other questions, I will refer to the Premier.