Page 2435 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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under a rock, as the government produced a wide variety of such analyses between 2009 and 2011 and these reports were then all seriously analysed by the public accounts committee inquiry into government office accommodation, as well as by the estimates committee.
Now, of course, Mr Smyth was on the public accounts committee for that whole period, as was my former colleague, Ms Le Couteur. These reports, with the commercial-in-confidence sections omitted, are available online on the Economic Development Directorate website, along with the other information for potential tenderers. So I am not sure whether the Liberal Party have not looked at that website and whether they think there are still major holes in that analysis and documentation, but I think a lot of work has been done since the initial proposal.
As well as the requirement for copies of the business case and the economic and environmental analyses, the public accounts committee also asked for a whole-of-government office accommodation strategy before any further work occurred on a government office building. This strategy was delivered in January this year. Peckvonhartel was commissioned to look into all of the ACT government’s current office accommodation, and it looked at what the best size, configuration, geographic placement, layouts and type of buildings would be.
The strategy takes this analysis into account, and concludes that the best option for the government is to have a main office hub of around 40,000 square metres in Civic, have the Gungahlin office of 9,500 square metres as a satellite office and look into what other satellite offices should be kept or established, including those at Dickson, Belconnen, Woden and Stirling. Additional office space will probably still be necessary in the city, and this is what is being looked at through the market testing process.
It also looked at the best arrangements, in terms of cost to government, of leasing versus ownership. The KPMG economic analysis was that approximately 40 per cent ACT government-owned and 60 per cent leased would give the best value, and, in terms of prioritising which buildings the government owns, maintaining ownership of core buildings that will be needed centrally over the long term is important; for example, those buildings close to the Assembly.
Now that the government has this very useful information about whether it is better for the government to own or lease buildings and at which point it becomes better to do what, this will be helpful when evaluating the registrations of interest and looking at the range of options available. In asking the government to completely scrap any plans for new office accommodation, Mr Hanson neglects to address the key issues at heart here, the reason why the government started its work on new accommodation.
The point is that if the government does not do anything to change the current office accommodation, it would ultimately cost the government more. I understand that all ACT government-owned buildings are C and D grade buildings, which are expensive to continue to maintain and operate, and the buildings that the ACT government leases are B grade. The financial analysis looked at comparisons between a new 4.5 star NABERS building, leasing space in a comparable quality building, business as usual, upgrading existing buildings to 4.5 star NABERS and minimal upgrades.
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