$171m budget blow-out takes the shine off ASIO's new HQ
Spy central ... ASIO's unfinished central office.
THE budding crown jewel in Australia's intelligence community - ASIO's new central office - has had another cost blow-out, with the Canberra lakeside behemoth now set to cost close to two thirds of a billion dollars.
The $631 million project will house the 2000-odd employees of the country's largest and most powerful intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which is responsible for national security.
Now in its fourth year of construction, the building has become a handy metaphor for the unchecked growth of the intelligence community since 2001.
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This month's blow-out, due to previously undiscovered asbestos on the site and contractor delays, means the building equals more than a third of the $1.5 billion one-year surplus announced by the Treasurer, Wayne Swan.
On the northern shore of Lake Burley Griffin with a view across the water to Parliament House, the building was announced in 2007 by the Howard government at a cost of $460 million.
The cost has ballooned several times since then - to $527 million in 2008, $589 million in 2010 and finally to $631 million this month. The new figure represents a 37 per cent, $171 million, increase on the initial cost.
Even in 2007, it was to be the most expensive Commonwealth building project since the construction of new Parliament House in the 1980s.
A spokeswoman for the Finance Department, which manages the construction, told the Herald the latest rise came from ''contractors underestimating the extent and cost of their works on this highly complex project''.
The spokeswoman also revealed the December date set for ASIO staff to begin moving in had been pushed back three months to early next year.
That was due to ''subcontractors underestimating the complex commissioning and security requirements of the building''.
''The extent of these increases in cost and program need to be viewed in the context of the size, complexity and length … of the project,'' the spokeswoman said.
And the latest price hike may not be the last, with about 60 electrical contractors forced to walk off the site yesterday when their company, Heyday Group, collapsed. The local construction union said it could take weeks before electrical contractors were able to return to the site.
Cost has not been the project's only issue. In March, the site was evacuated when at least 19 large glass panels on the building's facade fell off, and early last year, a teenager broke in and fell nine metres onto a concrete floor, where he lay for up to 36 hours.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/171m-budget-blowout-takes-the-shine-off-asios-new...
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