Cairns Entertainment Precinct's future hangs in the balance

Daniel Strudwick

Friday, April 13, 2012

© The Cairns Post

Vision: Mayoral candidate Cr Margaret Cochrane's preferred site for a performing arts theatre, on Hartley St opposite the convention centre.


THERE are 122 people in expert fields already at work on the proposed Entertainment Precinct, and contracts worth $2.63 million are signed and under way with almost 30 companies. 

The figures, obtained by The Cairns Post, signal that Mayor Val Schier’s election rivals will likely find it harder and more costly than expected to throw away the $155 million project. The council has also accepted and spent most of its first payment from the Federal Government – $6 million that the Commonwealth could demand back if the next council chooses to scrap the plans and start fresh.

Mayoral candidates Margaret Cochrane, Ian Thomas and Bob Manning have all proposed smaller and cheaper versions of the current council’s project, and want the facility moved away from the waterfront. But Cr Schier has warned her political rivals that the State and Federal governments would happily withdraw their funding if the project is stalled by the next council and strict deadlines are missed.

Cr Schier’s three opponents have each insisted that the $97.3 million of state and federal funding promised to the entertainment precinct could be transferred to another project on a different site. "I think that with a new state government – with different thinking and different views in place – then there shouldn’t be any difficulty transferring the funds to another site," said Cr Cochrane, who officially launched her alternative plans for a performing arts theatre on Hartley St yesterday.

But neither the State nor Federal governments have said whether their funding would still be on offer if the incoming council wanted to change the precinct’s design and location.

Cr Schier said mayoral candidates were being "naive and misleading" if they told voters government cash would be available for any projects other than the one currently under way. "If anyone thinks they can take the money on the table and somehow allocate it to another site or another design, it’s just ludicrous in the extreme," Cr Schier said. "There’s a belief out there that we can do whatever we want with this money, but it’s been given to us in a partnership arrangement for a particular project on a particular site."

Work continues on the project but faces a roadblock after the new LNP State Government banned the council from awarding an integral contract on Wednesday, saying it was too close to the April 28 election.

It means a managing contractor – one of the most significant positions in the planning and construction process – won’t be appointed until the end of May, after a new council is sworn in. The council has worked for the past two years on the current plans, but all work would need to restart if the incoming council wanted to move the project or scale it back.

Such a move could breach the funding arrangements signed with the State and Federal governments, which require CRC to meet strict deadlines or risk losing the cash. "If we don’t meet those milestones and we break those contracts, then the other levels of government will gleefully take their money away because they’ve got budgets that need to be balanced," Cr Schier said.

According to the council’s agreement with the Commonwealth, a managing contractor needs to be appointed by May 31, almost as soon as the incoming council is sworn in.
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