Page 2426 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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If we go back to the history of death star I—“death star” being the name given to this by the Labor Party, I believe, but then it permeated throughout the community—it was Jon Stanhope who first, if you recall, Madam Speaker, insisted that this was essential and then he had to dump it. At the time of the original proposal, this was going to be the most expensive floor space ever proposed by capital expenditure, by fitout, by square metre in the entire ACT, ever.
If I compare it to other A-grade buildings, the cost of this new office building was, per square metre, $6,478 whereas in the health building, it was $4,130; the ATO, $3,833; and DEEWR, $4,358—a rolled-gold solution indeed. Back in the budget reply debate—remember the good old days when we used to have a debate, before Andrew Barr ran away from that—back when we used to have a debate, I remember when the artist’s impression of this new building was shown, it did not quite capture the sky bridge that the ministers wanted but it certainly had the great edifice and, I think, a wonderful fountain in front, a Trevi fountain. It caused a lot of mirth but it was not actually that far from the truth when you look at the enormous cost that was associated with the building, including the $11 million ministerial wing, private ministerial suites, a lounge, a crisis room—a crisis room where Andrew could go and hide—a reading room, all with a lovely $2 million fitout and the $2 million sky bridge, of course. I thought that that was just superb.
All along the government said, “This will save you money, our being in an $11 million suite with our sky bridge. This is going to be good for you, good for the people of the ACT.” Of course, that was debunked. That was absolutely rejected. That was debunked when we went through this process in detail in estimates. And I do recall when we asked for the savings, when we said, “Show us your savings,” the consultants and the government came in with their savings and it was an A4 piece of paper in about font 16. Do you remember that, Mr Smyth, through you, Madam Speaker? Mr Smyth will remember that, because there was great mirth and great embarrassment on the side of the government about all of these savings. That included $12.7 million in rental savings. They were claiming a saving on rent but not actually the expense that went with the building. So they were saying, “We are going to save this on rent,” but they had not factored in the fact you have actually got a bit of a bill to pay, to pay back your $432 million.
There were all these workforce efficiencies, $4.6 million in workforce efficiencies. It was going to save $2 million in churn. Once everyone was in the new death star, no-one would want to ever leave the ACT public service, apparently, and it was going to save $2 million just in the great attraction of working in the death star.
There was going to be a 1.5 per cent increase in productivity. All of a sudden, everyone was going to become more productive. They could control their own ventilation and lighting, and that was going to make everybody so much more efficient that we were going to save $5.8 million a year. Extraordinary! This went on and on and eventually it all fell over.
In many ways, I think that this was the demise of Jon Stanhope. I certainly remember at that budget breakfast when he had been made a laughing stock because of this
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