Wellcamp cost details go from commercial in confidence to ‘we’ll reveal them when the feds do’
After months of her government insisting that the cost of the Wellcamp mega project couldn’t be revealed, suddenly it has been. But, writes Jessica Marszalek, either something is commercial in confidence or it isn’t.
Opinion
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You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.
And with that, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk obliterated her government’s long-prosecuted argument as to why taxpayers can’t be told how much they’ve paid for the Wellcamp quarantine facility.
Because after months of her government insisting the cost of the mega project couldn’t be revealed, suddenly there was a scenario in which it could.
And that was that if the federal government revealed its price tag for its Pinkenba facility, then Palaszczuk would be “more than happy to release our costs”.
And that makes no sense.
Because either something is commercial in confidence and cannot be revealed for any reason, or it isn’t.
And if it isn’t, then perhaps it’s not being revealed because the state government simply doesn’t want taxpayers to know how much they paid for a 1000-bed facility that’s been housing no more than 60 people at a time since the first 500 beds opened this month.
The state copped to spending $48.8m on capital costs late Wednesday after Palaszczuk’s dodgy promise.
But we still don’t know the lease costs, running costs, or the total budget, even though the Commonwealth was happy to immediately tell us Pinkenba will cost between $350m to $400m.
And we have no explanation about why the state’s full budget – too general to give commercial information away – is such a secret.
So while weathering a government integrity storm involving questions of transparency and accountability, we learn that Palaszczuk is only “happy” to release a major infrastructure project’s costs as part of some kind of tit-for-tat political exercise.
That’s a weird take on transparency and accountability.
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