“A Deed of License has been entered into with Mr Jack Sim to open and operate from the No.2 division Boggo Road Gaol for an initial trial period of four months. The License requires Mr Sim to allow fair and equitable access by other organisations that wish to also use the site.”
This is what Public Works minister Tim Mander wrote to the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society on 7 January 2013, one month after he made similar statements to the press. It is unequivocal. Cameron ‘Jack’ Sim was contractually required to provide fair and equitable access to Boggo Road for other groups wanting to offer services there.
This was in fact one of the few conditions of this license we ever heard about. What the rest of this license says remains a veiled secret, because even though the Newman government handed commercial control of this public asset to a less-than-impressive small business without any tender process or the most basic fact checks, all the Right To Information attempts that we know of to actually see this license have been blocked.
Now, more than halfway through the trial period, with Boggo Road Gaol now established by Mr Sim as the most expensive heritage tourism site in southeast Queensland and the worst-value heritage gaol experience in the whole of Australia, and now severely under-performing, a 'Schedule of Fees' has finally been cobbledtogether by Mr Sim. Does this document provide the required fair and equitable access, and who is to judge? Surely the judges have to be the very third-party organisations this document was designed to provide that fair and equitable access for - and the response from all quarters so far has been a resounding NO.
There are four big reasons why the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society believes this ‘Schedule of Fees’ to be unfair, inequitable and unacceptable, and these are:
- Exorbitant fees
- Timeshare access
- The 30-Day Rule
- No competition allowed
1. EXORBITANT FEES
The first problem with the Schedule of Fees is the charge. We know that the license requires that "The Licensee must ensure that the costs imposed by the Licensee on third parties for making Third Party Bookings are subject to a reasonable, equitable and fair fee structure". So what do we get? Mr Sim demands that volunteers and community groups have to put $80-$120 in his pocket before they can take people through a public asset that he neither owns nor pays any rent for... and on what grounds?Well, as is written in his own words in the Schedule of Fees:
“Hire fees for Non-Profit/Non-Commercial Organisation Hirers to operate historical tours at the Gaol are designed to cover operational costs only, and encourage historical activities and experiences associated with Boggo Road.” (my emphasis)
So what are these ‘operational costs’ the $80-$120 is supposed to cover?
- Rent? He’s not paying any.
- Staff to open the prison? No, because the gaol will be open anyway because third parties are expected to run their tours at the same time as Mr Sim runs his tours. So his staff will be there anyway.
- Electricity? Turning on about three dozen light bulbs for two hours would cost about $1. And of course that’s only for a night tour. And, once again, he will be using the gaol and electricity at the same time anyway.
So in reality there are no operational costs to even begin to justify the $80-$120 slug to community groups, andby his own reasoning (“Hire fees... are designed to cover operational costs only”) we should be paying about one dollar maximum to use Boggo Road (which is still more than Mr Sim pays). Are his fees "reasonable, equitable and fair" as contractually required? Of course not.
2. TIMESHARE ACCESS
Another glaring anomaly is that, having shelled out $80-$120 to Mr Sim for the privilege of getting into a public asset (which, remember, he neither owns nor pays any rent for), we don’t even get exclusive access for our customers because, as is stated in the Schedule, tours are to be “run on half-hour between regular public tours booked by Boggo Road Gaol Pty Ltd.”
So we have to run our tour while Mr Sim has other tour groups in there. Bearing in mind that only a small part of the gaol is open and space is very limited, this could easily lead to two completely different tour groups getting in each other’s way. We would have different pacing, different routines, and it is quite likely the groups end up in the same place at the same time with the different guides having to talk over each other. Noise overlap would be inevitable anyway, and the atmosphere of night tours in particular would be ruined.
This is unfair not only to us and our tour groups, but also to Mr Sim’s customers (who would also be paying twice as much as our customers to begin with).
3. THE 30-DAY RULE
Another requirement is that community groups have to book and pay for tours at least 30 days in advance. Now this obviously limits our ability to book tours at shorter notice or do one-offs. It also means we have to pre-book and pay for a specific date and time before we can market it and then hope we get enough customers to cover costs to Mr Sim.
The question is, WHY do we have to book 30 days in advance? Normally this requirement would allow the licensee to plan ahead and know when the site is free for other activities, but this is only logical when exclusive access is provided. It makes absolutely no sense if we have to run our tours at the same time as his anyway. So there is no logical reason for the 30-day booking requirement, which appears to be designed purely to limit access and make life difficult for us.
4. NO COMPETITION ALLOWED
Mr Sim claims to be keen to promote the tourist industry, but apparently that only means his business. The Schedule of Fees explicitly states that no other private businesses can run tours there. So much for the free market, and Minister Mander's statement that "The License requires Mr Sim to allow fair and equitable access by other organisations that wish to also use the site".
There are also a number of other arbitrary clauses relating to paying bonds and safety inductions I won't go into here.
The production of this Schedule of Fees has been an exercise in incompetence. Not only did Mr Sim tell Public Works that he sent us a copy of the Schedule of Fees in December (a lie, because he never), but has so far taken four attempts to cobble together this inherently unfair document. The result is nothing more than an attempt to suppress competition (Mr Sim has always been opposed to people competing with him, free market be damned), and comes across as a greedy cash grab from volunteers and community groups in return for granting access to a public building he doesn’t own or pay for.
All this leads to the big question.It was a condition of Mr Sim’s Deed of License that he provided fair and equitable access to Boggo Road for third parties. He has FAILED to provide that fair and equitable access. Will his Deed of License now be revoked? We will now be asking this question of politicians and public servants, but what do YOU think? Comments are welcome below.
POSTSCRIPT
You know what the worst part of all this is? When Mr Sim started out in business the museum management let him have an office at Boggo Road and access for tours, sleepovers and other money-making activities over a number of years FOR FREE. $0.00. When he eventually did start paying a community group rent for this office space and access for activities, it was less (for a whole month) than what he now demands for allowing community groups in for a single two-hour tour. For years he exploited the generosity and community spirit of volunteers while doing what he could to minimise financial returns to Boggo Road. Now he is doing what he can to keep those volunteers out of Boggo Road and ripping them off for every last cent he can squeeze out of them.