Page 4875 - Week 13 - Thursday, 2 November 2017
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fact, the brief had the right block and section. The casino was talking about that block and section. The Director-General of the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate has now sent the public accounts committee a letter saying that the block and section were correct.
Now we have evidence that the ACT government acquired the Glebe Park block at about the same time as the casino was interested in it. In May 2015 the Chief Minister received a written brief discussing this Glebe Park block. The same month he met with Aquis about their proposal; yet there are no minutes available of that meeting. It was in the same month, and the following couple of months, that the deal to purchase this very block took place. We need an ICAC.
Regarding the CFMEU headquarter in Dickson, it is a sorry story. The situation is as follows: we know that a week after Andrew Barr became Chief Minister the ACT Labor government secretly purchased the CFMEU headquarters for $3.9 million. We know they did a deal on 16 December and settlement occurred on 19 December. It was a little Christmas gift from one comrade to another.
The backstory is even worse. The government would have you believe that it was a land swap. However, it does not look like a land swap to me. It is just three separate transactions that all favour the CFMEU. The government would have you believe that the Tradies won a tender to buy a car park and then the parties got together and the government conveniently decided to sell another block.
How many other tenderers were given the opportunity to engage in a similar land deal? How many other tenderers could supposedly win a tender, and then say, “By the way, I won’t pay you for five years but instead you should pay me $4 million and, by the way, I’ll stay in the same building for another four years as well”? We need an ICAC to stamp this out.
Firstly, the tender, I believe, was geared towards the Tradies. When a government released a site for a club next door to an existing club, who would buy it? Nobody would. Of course, the only person that would open a club next to the Tradies would be the Tradies. It is no wonder that a prized site in Dickson, despite 20 people expressing interest, returned only two expressions of interest. I am very curious to learn about the unsuccessful tenderer. A tender is awarded to the Tradies to operate a club next door to their own club and with the ability to build apartments on top. At that point, rather than pay the $3.2 million for that site, they convince the government to give them $4 million for another site.
But for years the government had been planning out this eventuality. In 2010 the planning authority said:
If the Tradies Club seeks to redevelop their site in the future, consideration should be given to incorporating the adjacent car park
The ACT government even got a valuation in 2010 for the Tradies. The instructions to the valuer included:
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