Auditor-general Maxine Cooper has found serious deficiencies in the government's sale of ACTTAB last year, pointing to poor documentation, lack of transparency, and inappropriate exclusion of three of the interested parties.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Releasing the results of her investigation of the sale on Friday, Dr Cooper said the sale price of $105.5 million was a good result, far exceeding expectations of $36 million and $48 million. The buyer, Tabcorp, had the experience and integrity to run the business, and the racing industry and staff had been adequately considered. But she criticised the way it was done and the exclusion of three bidders.
Last year, corporate bookmakers slammed the process as a "sham", saying the government was always going to choose a TAB as the buyer. Tabcorp is now restructuring the betting agency, with the loss of most jobs.
She also pointed to no evidence of documented assessments of the submissions by the sales project team and no evidence of a formal evaluation report.
"The incorrect application of evaluation criteria presents a risk to the probity of the sale process," she said. "...There is a high probability that interested parties would have had an expectation that they would be evaluated against the criteria in the Request for Expression of Interest document. This did not occur."
Two of the early bidders operated large totalisator pools; the other three had been excluded on the basis that they didn't. But Dr Cooper said their exclusion was inappropriate, given the criteria didn't require early bidders to have been already operating a totalisator pool.
"Concerns regarding the incorrect use and application of expression of interest criteria are not issues of semantics as three of the five potential interested parties that provided expressions of interest were excluded from further consideration in the sale process."
The government solicitor said the of the three excluded bidders, one said "merely that they had some experience offering pari-mutuel wagering", another said they would "endeavour to reach an agreement" with one of the existing operators of a totalisator pool, and the third said they "would hope to contract with a pari-mutuel operator of build their own system". None demonstrated that they had access to or were likely to get access to a totalisator system and a sufficient pari-mutuel pool. The chief minister's directorate advised that it would have been irresponsible not to exclude them, given they stood little or no chance of getting a totalisator licence. Taking them to the next stage would have made a farce of the process, the directorate said.
Dr Cooper said the bidders had only been given 11 days to come up with their plans, and while the outcome would not necessarily have been served by allowing the three bidders to progress, the criteria had been poorly crafted and the evaluation had been poor.
The Liberals' finance spokesman, Brendan Smyth, said. "If you can't trust them to sell ACTTAB how are you going to trust this government to run the asset sale program to fund Capital Metro and indeed how can you trust them to get the Capital Metro tender process right?"
