Page 2910 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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The government office building is a huge project. The first point I would like to make is that the government has not helped itself in selling it. An enormous amount of work at great expense has been undertaken, and this is very useful and informative. However, to some extent the project has been made more complicated through the presentation of that information than it might otherwise have been. I would add to that that you can probably also attribute a significant part of the difficulty to the fact that significant expense will be incurred irrespective of whether we take the active decision to do something or passively continue along and maintain the status quo.
This is not simply a “build or don’t build” scenario; we have to do something. I think much of the difficulty has been in evaluating the difference between the various scenarios. There is a range of debates that exist within the broader “build or don’t build” question. One of these is the government ownership versus private ownership question and the various permutations that exist along the spectrum between the complete ownership options at either end. This question appeared to be somewhat further confused by the option of the building being owned by the superannuation provision account. This is very different from private ownership. In principle the Greens have no problem with this option; however, we do have to be cautious about this, because ultimately the money in the account will need to be paid out in entitlements, and there needs to be a mechanism for the government to ultimately buy the building back if it is to remain in public hands. The Greens are open to the broader question about the better ownership model, although it must be said that all the evidence available so far seems to suggest that public ownership is the better option.
The next significant question is: should we build a new building or buy an existing one and retrofit it so that it achieves the desired environmental outcomes and reduces the overall footprint of the building? A subquestion of that is: given that there is not a building of that desired size, would much be lost if we had a smaller building with slightly fewer public servants in it or, alternatively, two buildings to spread them across? This will, of course, impact on the objective of having everyone together to encourage agency interaction. I would be interested to hear more about how significant this would be. I understand the attraction of building a new, purpose-built building: it would probably be easier. But it remains to be seen whether the overall impacts would in fact be better. Further, given the existing and impending availability of office space, is it possible to lease a building at a significant discount for the next five to 10 years while the project is developed? This scenario would allow the sale of existing government buildings and allow that capital to be invested until it can be spent on building or retrofitting the longer term option.
I would say at this point that it would be an overly burdensome task to investigate every conceivable option. Nevertheless, given the scope of the proposal, and indeed the need to resolve the accommodation issue, the government should be approaching all the options with an open mind and, rather than ticking the boxes, carefully considering each option and being prepared to step back from the single new building option if that is what the evidence suggests is the most prudent thing to do.
One additional option that has been put is for the government to test the private market to see what they can deliver. This may well be problematic at this stage, but it
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