QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Women, Minister for Government Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (14:43): I'm happy to update the chamber with the information that I have available to me on Snowy 2.0. I think you'll remember that, when we came to government, we inherited a project that was having significant difficulties.

If you remember, I think former prime minister Turnbull announced this project and said it would cost $2 billion. It had not had a business case done. There had been no scoping done.

There had been no surveys done of the geological environment that the project was going to be built in, and so there was a significant reset probably in the first couple of years of our government, and that increased the project total cost to in the order of $12 billion. Currently, the Snowy board is undertaking a cost reassessment for the total project cost.

We have not received that work yet. It is due to the government towards the end of July. I would say that Snowy 2.0 is more than half built.

It is an important project for the nation in terms of the security and stability of our energy grid. It is an important project, but, as to any further reassessment of the costs, the information that I have are the ones where we took that initial reset to properly scope the project, get it back on track and work with the organisation to deliver the project when it was raised to $12 billion.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?