A Queensland Audit Office report has revealed that Queensland Police signed a controversial 15-year lease for a new police hub in Stones Corner without approval, then failed to inform the office's auditors of the decision. The disclosure exposes a systemic failure in financial governance that leaves Queensland taxpayers exposed to a $116 million liability for which funding was never secured.
The lease, signed to set up a new station at Stones Corner in Brisbane's inner south, is worth $116 million over 15 years, with an option to extend it for a total of $240 million. The lease was signed without an allocated funding source. This represents one of the most significant operational oversights by the Queensland Police Service in recent years, raising serious questions about internal controls and institutional accountability.
The failure to disclose the arrangement to auditors is particularly concerning. When an organisation conceals significant financial commitments from those charged with oversight, it undermines the very purpose of independent audit. The public has a right to expect that government agencies, especially those entrusted with the public safety function, operate with transparency and fiscal discipline.
The decision left Queensland Police with a significant budget hole, and internal documents show a need to cut budget allocations by 5.6 per cent to manage the shortfall. This creates a cascading problem: frontline services face pressure not because crime rates have changed, but because of a single contractual commitment made without proper financial planning.
The Stones Corner property is owned by the Aequitas Group, with Brisbane investors Geoffrey McIntyre and Norman Fox serving as directors and owners through holding companies. Property records reveal that Aequitas purchased the Stones Corner building for $45 million in 2021, with the current lease price representing up to five times that amount. This raises legitimate questions about whether the price paid represents value for money and whether competitive alternatives were properly evaluated.
Defenders of the decision point to operational necessity. The new Stones Corner hub was chosen in part to serve anticipated needs leading up to the 2032 Olympics and beyond, and Queensland Police stated that the area's limited real estate market influenced the decision, noting that the Stones Corner site was one of few that could meet operational needs. A modern, consolidated facility can improve policing efficiency when it consolidates operations from multiple ageing stations.
The government's position is that the lease is manageable. Police have significant unallocated funds in their accommodation budget, including an expected $40 million saving on a youth remand project at Wacol. However, this argument contains an uncomfortable implication: that the police force had hundreds of millions of dollars in unallocated accommodation budgets without clear governance structures to oversee how those funds would be deployed.
Queensland's police commissioner has referred the controversial lease to the Crime and Corruption Commission due to the circumstances and is awaiting a response. Queensland Police engaged KordaMentha, a firm specialising in forensic and financial reviews, to conduct an end-to-end audit of the lease agreement.
The Stones Corner lease reveals a troubling gap between procedure and practice. An organisation can have policies on paper without ensuring they are followed. The failure to secure approval before signing, combined with the failure to disclose the arrangement to auditors, suggests institutional drift. Someone made the decision to sign this lease knowing it lacked proper authorisation, and someone decided not to inform the auditors responsible for financial oversight. These are not technical errors; they are choices.
The investigation will likely reveal who made these decisions and what reasoning justified them. Until that occurs, Queensland taxpayers are entitled to expect far more rigorous controls over major commitments of public funds. A single lease should not remain unchecked at $116 million in committed expenditure. The audit office's role is to ensure that exactly this kind of thing does not happen. That it did suggests the system itself requires examination.