Smythe:

The DMR's assessment report came at the end of the process as a prelude to the final decision. It was a report that seemed to me to be done to oblige the politicians, to make the politicians answer their job easier, to provide some justification for going ahead. The figures were fiddled and a number of outside consultants were used to boost the DMR's own stocks although there work wasn't acknowledged in the report.

Nick Greiner,Opposition Leader:

The old putting Dracula in charge of the Blood Bank principle. If you have the principle construction authority, the people who are gung-ho to build it whose Minister is personally politically committed to it, if you have them in charge of the Environmental Impact Statement, it is obvious that you're going to get a view that is in favour of construction.

Nielson:

The Harbour Tunnel was a very visible project. It was treated by the politicians as an opportunity to score points. So it became a very public debate, fairly heated, a lot of information was promoted that really had no validity. I guess at the end of the day the RTA was able to sift through the debate and I believe at the end of it was able to make sensible decisions about how the proposal should be modified to make it more environmentally sensitive.

Judd:

From what I understand of it is that the process that we went through was exactly the correct process and I can't understand people saying that's biased if its been done by the consultant when I think that's exactly what the EP&A Act requires.

Toon:

I mean it seems to me that there must ultimately be that power to make a political decision and I believe all the decisions and all environmental decisions are ultimately political decisions, not anything else.

Morrison:

At the moment my feeling is that the politicians perceive that there is more money that needs to be spent on roads and I think that that's probably a true perception. However, I think that the public tends to want more money spent on fixing the local roads, on fixing the pot-holes. But the politicians, it seems to me, are misinterpreting those calls from the public and they're looking for high visibility projects, something that they can pork-barrel with if you like.