The Finance Department will make another attempt this week to convince a sceptical Parliament that spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a swish new office building makes financial sense for taxpayers.
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But the department is still determined to keep taxpayers in the dark about how much of their money it is preparing to pay property developers Willemsen Group.
Top departmental officials will front Parliament's Public Works Committee on Friday morning, hoping to convince its senators and MPs to give the green light to the proposed move after the committee indicated it was not satisfied with the answers it had received so far.
Finance has pinned its hopes on convincing the multi-party group of politicians that it can find a new tenant to pay $120 million in rent for its present HQ, the John Gorton Building in Parkes, after the department moves out.
Finance's plan to move almost all its staff into the new state-of-the-art building appears shaky after the proposal came under fire from the committee last month.
Politicians on the committee feared Finance's plan to consolidate employees into 1 Canberra Avenue at the foot of Parliament House would be $66 million more expensive in the long term, but departmental officials say the figure was "plain wrong".
The department says it needs to bring its 1800 workers together under one roof from the nine separate buildings they currently occupy which are run-down and overcrowded.
But Finance is keen to keep key aspects of the deal shrouded in secrecy, insisting on confidential submissions to the committee, closing hearings off to the public and media and refusing to make public its cost-benefit analysis on the deal.
Top officials received a frosty response from the Public Works Committee during a hearing in February with members openly hostile to the move to Canberra Avenue, repeatedly going back to the $66 million figure.
But Finance says it would cost $220 million to upgrade the John Gorton Building to the A-grade standard it wants.
Finance's top bureaucrats said the depressed market for office in Canberra at present was an advantage because a good deal could be struck at 1 Canberra Avenue, which included the Willemsen Group paying up to $32 million for a fit-out.
The senators and MPs on the committee were also dubious of the claims by Finance officials that the need for confidentiality is stopping it from publicly explaining all of its reasoning to make the move.
In a new submission to the committee ahead of Friday morning's hearing, Finance says that finding a new tenant for John Gorton House, which would almost certainly be another government department, would help sweeten the deal for the taxpayer.
The department's deputy secretary Jenet Connell says Finance did not make itself quite clear in the first hearing and did not mention $120 million is says it could get for the John Gorton Building, even in its present run-down state.
"The notes to Table 1 indicate that the option to remain in a refurbished John Gorton building is a superior outcome on a Whole of Government basis," Ms Connell wrote.
"This is incomplete information because rental income, even in the nonrefurbished premises currently occupied by the Department, would add approximately $120 million to Commonwealth revenue in this scenario, where these buildings are re-tenanted should Finance vacate."
The committee will hear more evidence on Friday.
