TAXPAYERS unknowingly forked out more than $140,000 renting unused office space in Cairns for seven months.
The Justice Department paid a Mackay-based owner $20,000 a month since November to rent the space for an expansion of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Citi Central building.
The delay in moving in was because the Government needed to spend a further $880,000 to set up the office area before staff could move into the building on the corner of Spence and Sheridan streets on June 15.
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Cairns real estate industry sources say the waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars is not unusual with government leases.
"That goes on all the time but not deliberately – it has been going on across the country for years," one source said.
"Sometimes the stars and moon align but other times there are extraordinary waits."
"The Government is too big to be efficiently organised … they should be but they are not," the source said.
Opposition Deputy Leader Lawrence Springborg last night slammed the State Government, labelling the lease as "fundamental mismanagement" and said it was "in Labor’s DNA" to waste money.
He demanded a review into all buildings leased by the Government but said he doubted Premier Anna Bligh would launch one.
It comes on the back of revelations of other Government rent bungles including Queensland Health spending $1.5 million of taxpayers’ money renting an empty Brisbane building for almost a year for IT staff.
"It should be a wake-up call but I don’t think she is capable of waking up," Mr Springborg told The Cairns Post.
"It’s just a waste. What’s happened is now Queenslanders are now paying a fuel tax and having their Queensland Rail sold off so the Government can throw money at waste like this."
Queensland Government Accommodation Office figures show the Government spends hundreds of thousands on individual leases for 33 buildings around Cairns each year – this includes another building leased by the Department of Justice and Attorney-General for $175,000 a year.
A spokesman for Public Works Minister Robert Schwarten said the Government’s portfolio of office buildings was regularly reviewed as the Government builds its $79.5 million William McCormack building, offering 9500sqm of office space, on the corner of Sheridan and Hartley streets.
"There are no vacant leased or owned commercial office buildings managed by the Department of Public Works in Cairns," the spokesman said in a written statement.
The Government owns buildings at 17-19 Sheridan St and Shields St and will begin renting back its Shields St building on a short-term lease once sold however details of the arrangement are not known.
Some within the commercial industry believe it may be cheaper for the Government to lease buildings per square metre rather than paying to build the William McCormack building when comparing occupancy costs per square metre.
