Royal Adelaide Hospital Site Redevelopment

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (15:27): Supplementary: can the minister confirm to the house that the original proposal from Commercial and General remained current at the time the proposal was rejected by the government?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Minister for Housing and Urban Development) (15:27): Certainly, to walk through the process for the benefit of the parliament, we went through an expression of interest process, as I think most people would understand. From basically that market-call process, we shortlisted down to a much smaller number of tenderers who initially responded to the expression of interest process; in fact, we shortlisted down to four. One of those withdrew themselves so that they could focus on another very large development in the CBD, and we assessed essentially three going forward.

The offer that was put forward by the proponent, with whom the government entered into exclusive negotiations through the course of this year, was a financial offer which was in response to that market call, and it was significantly higher than what was offered ultimately, on which the government made its decision. But it is important to understand that, as the parties then moved into the process of negotiations, as they signed up to a contractual process with one another that would govern the terms of those negotiations, it became clear to the government upon which some of those assumptions the proponent had based their financial offer, and it became clear to the developer what both the government and the community expectations were of the development of that site.

I think some assumption—or assertion, I should perhaps more accurately say—from the leader that there was an original offer which would have been acceptable to the government through this process is not particularly relevant, because what changed substantially during the course of the negotiations were further and better particulars that were made available to the proponent about the site, what was available, how it would be developed and what was also made understood to the government about what the proponent's intentions were for the development of the site.