Qld police commissioner orders audit into $240m cop shop lease

Queensland’s top cop says he ordered an audit into a controversial lease that could cost up to $240m to understand how the deal was reached.

The site in Brisbane’s Stones Corner earmarked for a police super station

Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski ordered an independent audit of a controversial lease of a building – which could cost up to $240m – because he “couldn’t get the answers” he wanted on how it came about

The Courier-Mail revealed Queensland Police Service had earlier this year signed a 15-year lease, with an option to extend it, for a building on Logan Rd, Stones Corner, to become a major police hub.

Records showed the lease could cost as much as five times as the owner paid for the building in 2021 if the full lease deal was followed.

Mr Gollschewski told The Courier-Mail he wanted to know how the decision was reached so ordered an audit, being undertaken by KordaMentha, and said he had been concerned about the cost and governance around the deal.

Mr Gollschewski said the lease had been completed before he was appointed commissioner this year.

He said he would try to make the situation sustainable.

“So how did we come to that decision? Where’s the funding source for it? How are we going to pay for it?” Mr Gollschewski said of the lease and of his decision to order an audit.

“I want to be fiscally responsible as a commissioner, I want to make sure that we spend the money on the right things, that I balance the budget.

Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski. Picture: Richard Walker

“I do want to be efficient so I can reinvest in things that we need, you know, whether it’s new equipment or whether it’s building new stations somewhere, I want to be able to try and be as efficient as possible.

“And you know and I was concerned about the governance that was applied around that and how that all came to do.

“So I couldn’t get the answers I wanted, so I said, OK, I’ll just have this independently audited because I want to learn from it.”

In responses about the lease, QPS has said it would not spend $240m because it had not taken up the eight-year lease extension.

When asked if he would have signed the lease, Mr Gollschewski said: “Can I put it this way? There’s a real operational need for this.”

He said there were many stations in Brisbane’s inner south that were old, including some that were houses.

“Obviously, with the increase in the numbers of police we’ve got in their calls for service and demand, it got problematic, some of them were quite old,” he said.

“So I’ll say this: there’s an absolute operational need for that facility. And I’m committed to making that work.

“It’s pretty clear advice for me that that legally we had to go with that.

“But, you know, I relooked at it and thought, nope, this is something that we actually need and we can make it work.”

Originally published as Qld police commissioner orders audit into $240m cop shop lease