The Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix has already cost Victorians in excess of one billion dollars and will have cost us an estimated $3 billion by the time the contract ends in 2037.
The Australian Grand Prix Corporation, a Victorian Government agency, is taking me to the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal at taxpayers’ expense to withhold information it wants kept hidden.
Even though the AGPC has at least three of its own lawyers on its payroll, it has also hired outside legal counsel to represent it at VCAT. I have no legal representation so why does the AGPC feel it necessary to bring in legal heavyweights? What does it want to hide? And why is it taking me, a 68-year-old Intensive Care nurse, to VCAT?
I am one of many who oppose the grand prix in a public park and the secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding this event. Successive Labor and Liberal governments have supported the grand prix. Through FOIs we have been able to hold the AGPC and, indeed, government to account.
For example, when the global TV audience for its grand prix was around 15 million, the AGPC claimed audiences of 350 million to 500 million. It was after I had lodged an FOI that the AGPC admitted its numbers had “been quoted incorrectly”, but that was well after successive Victorian premiers from Jeff Kennett to Daniel Andrews had publicly repeated those false figures, obviously without fact checking. We also have evidence, obtained through FOI, to indicate AGPC’s attendance figures are also artificially inflated.
I have sought documents from the AGPC for something innocuous: the grand prix’s attendance methodology. We merely wanted to know how it makes up its crowd numbers. I discovered through an investigation by the Victorian Ombudsman in 2006 that attendance numbers at the grand prix had only ever been “estimated”. What other event “estimates” its attendance numbers? Why does the AGPC continue to ‘estimate’ when there is technology available to do an exact attendance count?
According to the Hon. Steve Dimopoulos, Victorian Minister for Major Events, the grand prix is trialling scanners – a trial, according to the AGPC, that began in 2012!
Under FOI, the AGPC refused to divulge its attendance methodology citing “commercial in confidence”. It also claimed that disclosure would “likely” disadvantage it. I challenged the AGPC’s rejection of our FOI request with the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner who found in our favour. OVIC deemed the release of the AGPC’s attendance methodology is in the public interest saying it would “promote transparency, accountability and public oversight of expenditure of public funds”. That’s true. The grand prix has already cost Victorians in excess of a billion dollars and would have cost us an estimated $3 billion by the contract’s end in 2037. Surely we have the right to know the AGPC is honest in its accounting?
Victorians taxpayers are the major funders of the grand prix, yet the AGPC wants to keep this information, literally, under lock and key.
The AGPC has said that its methodology is “highly valuable”, is “known by only five people”, is “under tight security on its computer network”, has “strict security access” and is “password protected”.
Why is the AGPC’s attendance count methodology so secretive that it believes it has public imprimatur to pay for expensive, outside legal representation to keep its methodology hidden from public scrutiny?
We know TAC has had its funds plundered; Victoria’s hospitals required a secret $50m funding “top-up” and that VicRoads has no money to fix potholes.\ VicRoads is listed as a perennial sponsor of the GP and while the TAC dropped its sponsorship in 2012, it continues to display its slogans at the event.
Money, however, does not appear to be an issue for the AGPC, or the government, despite our woeful state debt with taxpayers bearing ever-increasing annual costs for the grand prix and MotoGP events it manages.
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said, “Democracies are based on the foundation of public scrutiny and open government.” Not when it comes to the grand prix, Malcolm! The AGPC rejects public scrutiny and will challenge OVIC’s legal edict at VCAT, but it is not OVIC that is being asked to front VCAT. It is me!
For someone who always hated getting up in front of the class, I am now front and centre, along with my husband, against a powerful government agency that has the backing of the Victorian Labor Government and Liberal opposition – and, of course, an experienced legal team. This is a David and Goliath battle. I hope that you, the public, will wish us well and that we can hold this government agency to account.
Joan Logan, is an ICU nurse, farmer, former athlete and FOI officer for Save Albert Park Inc. South Melbourne
Joan Logan
Joan Logan, FOI officer for Save Albert Park Inc
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