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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1996 ..

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (4.49): I agree with some things that Mr Moore has said and perhaps disagree with others. I believe that the approach the Government has taken this year, of separating out accommodation and ensuring that a payment is made to a central pool for accommodation which is government owned, is an appropriate one. It makes explicit the cost of accommodation and assists in better managing our assets to ensure that we get the best value for money and also that individual line agencies know how much their accommodation is really costing. It is interesting that they have chosen to do this this year. For two years in the Estimates Committee I asked them whether they were going to do it, and for two years they said that they would not do it; that it was not necessary; that it was not part of Government policy and they were not going to do it. Fortunately, on this occasion their consistent denials that they agreed with that approach have turned out to be wrong and they have actually agreed with the approach that I have been advocating in relation to this.

I also believe that, as a general principle, it is in the interests of the Territory for the Government to own accommodation rather than to lease it. I do not believe that leasing accommodation is, as a general rule, the cheapest alternative, any more than renting a house is cheaper than owning a house. On certain occasions it may be cheaper and in certain circumstances there may be good reasons why the Government wants to operate a small amount of office accommodation which it would be a lot cheaper to lease than it would be to buy the building. There is a need to look at horses for courses. I should also say that there are some other considerations in relation to office accommodation, such as how our deployment of office accommodation meets our objectives under the Territory Plan in relation to the distribution of the employment opportunities in the city, and the impact of the ACT as a property owner on the property market in the ACT. These are considerations which ought to be taken into account as well.

One thing about the office accommodation strategy, as set out in the budget papers, which ought to give members some cause for concern is the Government's stated goal of reducing the amount of office accommodation by a substantial amount over the next five years, by 2002, releasing onto the market 38,000 square metres of office space in order to meet their benchmark of 15 square metres per employee. In the budget papers they boast long and loud about how much this is going to save the budget. They talk about the reduction in the cost of office accommodation for employees as a result of these changes. One thing they do not seem to talk about much is what the impact on the property market is going to be of the Government abandoning 38,000 square metres of office space in the current climate. When I queried officials of Treasury in the Public Accounts Committee about this issue, they ducked and weaved a fair amount about exactly what they planned to do on this. It was all a draft strategy and they had not made up their minds. Of course, in the budget papers, which have come out since that time, they make it clear that they have adopted this strategy. This is not a draft; it is an adopted strategy of the Government. I think we need to be very cautious about this.

As happens with redundancies and as happens with cuts in Commonwealth capital works funding, again we find with this matter that, while the ACT Liberals bleat about what the Federal Liberals are doing and the dangers entailed in releasing lots of office accommodation onto the ACT property market at a time when the property market is not performing too well, when it comes to their own actions it is a different story.

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