Page 1438 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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drafted. I am advised that the department consulted with at least the following groups: Canberra City Rotary Club; Theatre Organ Society of Australia; Monaro Folk Society; Artists Society of Canberra; embassies, including the Spanish, Sri Lankan and Korean embassies; Oxfam; and Pedal Power. How were these groups chosen? It was by departmental officers searching through the manager’s booking records to find out who uses the hall. The actual users of the hall were consulted.
The Friends of Albert Hall group obviously could not be consulted, as the group was not formed until March 2007. No one knew they existed until recently. The RFT closed on Thursday, 24 May 2007. The process from here is that the tenders will be evaluated and a successful tenderer chosen and then—this is the important bit for you to note—contract negotiations will be carried out with the successful tenderer. All this will be done under the supervision of a probity auditor.
While this process is going on, the government will consider all options for assuring ongoing and effective public use of the hall. We will, for example, consider augmenting the successful tenderer’s funds for restoration. The contract negotiations could possibly be used to strengthen the successful tenderer’s business plan for usage of the hall. The RFT sets a requirement for tenders to “specify the extent of the activities for the initial 10 years, describe the central purposes and activities to be undertaken at the site and centre”—for the initial 10 years! The contract negotiation process could be used to elicit further details of the extent of those activities and build in key performance indicators.
Another requirement is to “specify target markets in which the business proposes to operate and/or plans to promote the facilities available at the site and centre”. Obviously, that is subject to the requirement to promote opportunities for community and cultural uses of the hall through a subsidised hire cost regime of not less than 50 days a year. Again, the contract negotiation could elicit more detail around these requirements. Tenderers are required also to provide a detailed program, including estimated costs of a capital works program and scheduled and reactive maintenance works. This detailed program must involve the expenditure of $1.02 million in the first three years of the arrangement. In other words, the successful tenderer will be required to overhaul the condition of the hall and keep it in good condition.
The Albert Hall is a terrific public asset which the government has nominated for national heritage listing. However, nomination does not of itself provide the territory with the immediate funding required to address all the major maintenance issues, some of which were already evident but not funded when the commonwealth handed the hall to the territory in 1989.
As part of the consultation process in 2006, the government encouraged the submission of ideas on how to restore the hall and yet ensure that it remained accessible by community groups. Many ideas were submitted and tested with the regular community users. From this process it became clear that it would be possible to achieve the joint aims of repairing the hall and maintaining community usage rates if the previous practice of short-term management agreements was replaced with a long-term agreement. This would provide any contracted manager with the necessary long-term source of funding needed to cover the costs of repairs and ongoing maintenance.
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