Yet when she announced the cost of the tram line had increased from $1.6 billion to $2.1 billion in a press release in December 2014,Ms Berejiklian – then the transport minister – said it was due to"customer improvements to the original scope"such as longer trams and stops.
But after this claim was rejected in the report released on Wednesday,Ms Berejiklian said she was"always upfront with what I knew at the time".
"At the time,when I explained the costs going from $1.6 to $2.1[billion],I explained fully what we knew at the time to be the main reasons for that,"she said.
However,the Auditor-General's report reveals that the government's own transport agency reported two months earlier that"mispricing and omissions in the business case had caused $517 million of the $549 million capital cost increase".