Page 1056 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 May 2020
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This is one of the three very complex reports that the public accounts committee has had to deal with in this term. It comes with a companion report, which I will speak to a little later in the song. The tender for the sale of block 30 Dickson has been a matter of some contention in the Assembly and in the community and has been the subject of an extensive Auditor-General’s report and now an extensive inquiry by the public accounts committee.
The committee has found that between 2012 and 2014 the economic development directorate, acting on behalf of the ACT government, conducted a sale by tender of block 30, section 34 Dickson. At one stage block 30 was called block 20, section 34 Dickson. In the course of the inquiry, it became clear to the committee that the economic development directorate, EDD, departed from good practice in a number of ways.
First, the EDD advertised the request for tender before it was authorised by cabinet to do so. Second, it negotiated terms with the successful tenderer, the Canberra Tradesmen’s Union Club, the Tradies, that were significantly different to those which were offered at the time of the tender, and thus offered different terms to the Tradies from those offered to other parties—in this case, Fabcot Pty Ltd—in contrast to an expectation under common law that the government would deal fairly with parties expressing interest in a tender.
Third, in offering distinctly different terms to the Tradies, the sale, in effect, became a direct sale—again, because the terms of the sale diverged so much from those of the request for tender. This was despite the fact that the ACT government had earlier, on three separate occasions, refused applications for a direct sale of the land to the Tradies, and it was contrary to the government’s stated objective that the tender should be open to all interested parties and fully transparent.
Fourth, the negotiations appear to have had significant effects on the value of block 30, in effect, increasing the value of the block while the normal purchase price remained the same, representing a potential financial advantage to the Tradies and a subsequent financial loss to the territory.
Fifth, due to significant changes in the terms of the transactions from those offered under the request for tender and due to legislative constraints on direct sale of land by the ACT government, there are questions about the legal validity of the outcome of the sale. Sixth, the record keeping was consistently poor throughout the entire process.
The terms negotiated by the economic development directorate included a land swap which had previously been ruled out by cabinet on three separate occasions. As a result of the land swap, the ACT government at this point in time has paid the Tradies for the land it surrendered, while the Tradies has yet to settle on the sale of block 30, section 34. The audit report says that the ACT government will likely end up paying the Tradies $414,000 to complete the exchange.
The sale has highlighted gaps in ACT legislation regarding the conduct of tenders and the disposal of land held by the government. There is surprisingly little guidance in
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