The different approaches that Australian governments have taken to the management and regulation of Commonwealth property over the years have had significant implications for how agencies manage their property portfolios. During the 1990s, agencies were handed responsibility for managing their own properties. Many got out of the property-owning business and entered instead into commercial leases. Some even outsourced the management of their portfolios to the commercial sector.
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In 2009-10, the Finance Department released the Commonwealth Property Management Framework setting out key policies and legislative requirements to which agencies were expected to adhere. These were to be "prepared in conjunction with and directly linked to an agency's broader strategic plans, including business and corporate plans. The linking to strategic plans will ensure that property management is closely aligned with other agency objectives and that property management issues are well understood and given appropriate consideration by executive management within the agency."
Finance has now revised the framework with a greater emphasis on financial probity, oversight, and impact assessment. Leases with a whole-of-life costing of over $30 million, or $100 million for the Department of Defence, will be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis using a Finance-developed model, and will have to be endorsed by the Minister for Finance or his or her nominee. An "approach to the market" for a new commercial lease will not be agreed to where suitable surplus space owned or leased by the Commonwealth is available. And if a potential move "might adversely affect a local economy, transport and logistics infrastructure and /or give rise to adverse social and community effects", a local impact assessment (undertaken by the Finance department) will be required.
The revisions could well end up torpedoing the Department of Immigration and Border Protection's plans to shift staff away from Belconnen and consolidate them either at Civic or at Canberra Airport's Brindabella Park business complex. Planning to that end began a year ago, driven in part by secretary Mike Pezzullo's yearning to have the new department (a merger of the geographically separate Department of Immigration and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service) under a single roof and preferably within easy access of Federal Parliament. The looming expiry of existing building leases is also believed to have been a factor in Mr Pezullo's thinking.
That the department has delayed a decision as to where it might move for 12 months underlines the plan's contentiousness. Politicians, businesspeople and Belconnen residents have condemned it as being of dubious public benefit, wasteful of public resources, and likely to decimate the area's economy. Some 4000 Immigration staff are based at the Belconnen town centre, and fears of economic disruption are probably not exaggerated.
The departure of so many workers would also erode existing planning principles relating to employment locations. These are enshrined in the National Capital Plan, and state that employment location "should enhance rather than detract from the city's role as the national capital", and that employment location proposals "shall be determined with regard to the transportation and environmental impacts". The Territory Plan, too, encourages the continued expansion of services and facilities at each of the town centres.
Whether Mr Pezzullo consulted Chief Minister Andrew Barr or his ministerial colleagues before embarking on his consolidation plans is unclear, though as custodians of the Territory Plan they clearly have a significant stake in ensuring the Belconnen Town Centre's continued viability. He his executive team certainly seem to may have felt themselves under no obligation to publicly justify their relocation plans, or to apprise affected parties and listen to their concerns. Given the haughty attitude so frequently manifested by the Commonwealth towards the Territory in planning matters, and the devolution of property management powers to departmental and agency heads in the 1990s, that's not surprising.
Now Finance is reclaiming that remit, and insisting that when departments ponder property relocation their executives be guided by more than just selfish objectives. If a water-tight financial and social case cannot be made for a proposal, then the Finance Minister is unlikely to look on it with favour. This is a welcome development given the federal bureaucracy's imposing presence in Canberra, and its tendency to overlook pubic opinion or sentiment. An additional bonus is the prospect that federal governments think twice before shifting departmental offices to marginal electorates for base political motives.
