Page 4476 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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A very important point is that a favourable report on the financial viability of the project was issued by the ACT Treasury. The report, dated 28 February 1990, concluded that over a 10-year period the project would "give an internal rate of return of 22.4 per cent or a positive net present value of $459,000". Contrary to this favourable report, it appears that the Minister was told that Treasury was "adamantly opposed to the proposal". This apparently induced the Minister to hand carriage of the proposal to the now disbanded marketing and major projects branch of the Chief Minister's Department. The major projects branch then induced the body set up at the Minister's behest, Canberra International Raceway Management Incorporated - which comprised members of the motor car racing, motorcycle racing and drag racing community, together with its partner in the project, the Road Safety Council of the ACT Incorporated - to provide detailed and comprehensive submissions on both motor sport and driver training uses of Sutton Park.
After many months of work and expense, a confidential 100-page proposal was prepared, which included detailed financial matters encompassing sound income projections. This proposal was submitted to the major projects branch for ACT Government consideration. The major projects branch then placed control of the Sutton Park complex in the hands of the public service. The major projects branch then found an alternative bidder within its own division, the Vocational Training Authority. There is concern that the research and ideas of the Road Safety Council and the motor sport group were given to the VTA. The VTA then submitted a proposal for the use of Sutton Park which apparently was brief and not well argued. I believe that the major projects branch supported the Transport Industry Training Council proposal, in one instance assisting the TITC in rewriting a media release. This support would seem to demonstrate a biased position, as this was done while the major projects branch were supposedly considering, in what one would expect to be a fair manner, the community use proposal.
A report damning the Motorsport Council and Road Safety Council proposal and praising the Transport Industry Training Committee proposal was then put before the Government. At about this time the ACT Government cancelled all funding for the Road Safety Council and set up another section of the public service to take over its functions. As a direct result of this, the Road Safety Council collapsed and no longer exists. The Labor Government then granted the TITC a 10c a year lease for 10 years under a supervisory board of management.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the ACT community has been deprived of its rights and of the facility from which it had a right to expect to gain considerable financial income. There are major questions raised by this matter. As the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Government agreed with the release, without cost, of the Sutton Park facility for a specific proposal, why was this agreement not honoured? Why was this proposal not honoured? As the Motorsport Council and the Road Safety Council were instrumental, in a major way, in gaining the complex for Canberrans, why were they shut out in the cold after this quite remarkable achievement?
The third question is: Why was their detailed, sound and comprehensive proposal rejected in favour of what appears to be a brief submission which was apparently far less appropriate? The fourth question - some would say that this was the most important of all - is: Why was the Sutton Park complex leased at
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