Page 2576 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 June 2005
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ACT economy moving forward. We have certainly heard people like George Wasson and Jim Soorley say that the planning system in the ACT is the worst in the country.
Mr Corbell came into estimates and said, “Well, you know, wherever you go they always say that. You go to Sydney and they say New South Wales has the worst planning system.” That dismissive approach was unfortunate. The planning system reform process shows that the minister acknowledges that the system is in trouble and that the system needs fixing. An Auditor-General’s report presented some time ago indicated that there are significant issues in relation to delays in the planning system that need to be fixed. As I said earlier, this situation has in part come about under this minister, and he needs to take some of the responsibility for where things are at the moment.
Another area of discussion in estimates was the tender process for Forde. Concerns were raised about Mr Corbell’s public comments during the tender process that, “We’d like to see interstate developers get the job because they’ll do a better job.” I think that intervention from Mr Corbell was unfortunate. The successful tenderer, CIC, said that they chose to partner Lend Lease not because they thought a local builder could not do the job but because they thought that is what the government wanted. So there is no doubt that Mr Corbell’s public statements, through the Canberra Times, influenced that process. That is unfortunate and that was one of the things I raised with Mr Corbell.
We also had discussion about the extent of the LDA’s activities. Whenever I asked a question about that, the response was, “Well, we have had this debate. There is an ideological debate as to whether you have an LDA or not.” But the real question was whether or not the LDA is monitoring the market to determine the appropriateness of its level of activity within that market, and that was a question that Mr Corbell refused to answer.
The last thing I would like to talk about is the loss of jobs within ACTPLA. I commend Mr Corbell for being candid and honest and telling us the exact number when we asked a question about it some time ago. It was hard to get out of some ministers the exact number of job losses in their portfolios, so I commend Mr Corbell for telling us that there would be between nine and 11 jobs lost in ACTPLA. When I said to Mr Corbell that jobs had been slashed, he said, “Slashed? It is not slashed.” Well, it is a matter of debate but it is still four per cent of the workforce and no doubt those who are losing their jobs would feel that it is a problem.
I would just make the point that these job losses—and this is also the case with the 240-plus job losses that we are seeing across the ACT public service—are a direct result of mismanagement by this government. You expand the public service quickly and then suddenly you have got to cut it back by 240 and say, “We take no responsibility for these jobs that are being lost.” This government needs to take responsibility because it has been in office now for four years and it has been expanding the public service. Suddenly a lot of the people they gave jobs to are going to be losing their jobs and that is not a good way to manage the economy and move forward. The people who are suffering will be those within ACTPLA and within other agencies who are about to lose their jobs or who have already lost their jobs. I think I will leave it there. I look forward to Mr Corbell’s response in particular to the broken election promises.
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