ACT chief minister Andrew Barr has effectively handed the cream of Australia's $28 billion a year conventions market to interstate rivals for the forseeable future by saying Canberra's long awaited "Australian Forum" won't go ahead unless the Federal Government chips in big dollars.
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That just isn't going to happen given the $8 million intended to come up with an investment ready proposal was pulled from the Territory budget early in February.
There is no way the Federal Government would, or could, consider such a proposal in the absence of a rigorous business case.
Initial estimates on the likely cost of the current proposal, for an "Australian Forum", jointly designed by Parliament House architects Guida Moseley Brown and Italy's Masimiliano Fuksas, came in at around $433 million.
When their design was unveiled in June 2015 it had risen to $700 million. On Monday Mr Barr said the cost would likely be closer to $900 million and, as a result, the cost benefit ratio had been shot to pieces.
The Chief Minister has attempted to justify the decision to axe the $8 million spend on an "investment ready" proposal by saying he did not believe, as a result of its "failure to engage over the last six years" that the Commonwealth Government was genuinely interested.
This, if true, makes perfect sense. If Mr Barr has compelling evidence the Federal Government is just going through the motions before turning any request for funding down then the $8 million dollars would certainly be better spent elsewhere.
It is intriguing however that he book ended his remark by observing that the Australian Forum, the lynch pin in the City to the Lake project, was "not my top priority, it never has been".
With Sydney's $1.5 billion, 25,000 square metre International Convention Centre open since December last year and Melbourne's latest $1 billion convention centre in use since 2009 this is possibly understandable.
It is disappointing if considerations such as these are the real reason Mr Barr has effectively abandoned a project on which considerable resources have been lavished and which enjoys significant community and business support.
Canberra, as the many advocates for a new convention centre have stressed over the years, is not Melbourne or Sydney and has advantages they cannot match.
The principal ones include access to Federal Parliament, the national headquarters of many significant government and non-government organisations, the presence of large numbers of lobbyists and, last but not least, excellent air services and a very short commute time from the landing gate to the city centre.
