Page 1994 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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So I think the jury is out on that one. We are actually prepared to give the government the benefit of the doubt. But I think there will be great problems with moving tourism back into a department. A number of us were at the breakfast yesterday and actually listened—it is a nice, novel thing for politicians to listen—to the concerns of industry about what is happening with tourism. I think the rationale for what is occurring here is extremely inadequate. The government’s explanations are very, very weak indeed. Tourism funding, of course, has been cut by over $3.5 million for the coming financial year, a reduction of 18 per cent, and a further $1 million will be cut in the following financial year. That is expected to result in a drop of 10 per cent in tourism in the ACT, or around 200,000 tourists.
We have heard that the industry reckons that about 1,200 jobs will be lost. As I said earlier, many of those will be young people. Bureaucracies do not tend to run tourism well. The net loss is about $20 million, according to estimates we have heard so far in relation to just this particular instance. I think the government has a very weak rationale for getting rid of the tourism body and putting it back into the department. I do not think that is going to help at all. I do not think that is going to result in any real savings. I have already made my point: sometimes you have to spend a bit of money to make a lot more.
Also, the Health Promotion Authority is something we do not think will fit well into health. It is bound to have a much more narrow focus, whereas it currently does a very good job of promoting healthy lifestyles to diverse groups in the community. One of the concerns I have had with the Health Promotion Authority—wearing my sport and recreation hat—is that, even in more recent times, less money is spent on promoting healthy, physical lifestyles through sport and recreation activities than on some of the more esoteric areas which I think will probably come to the fore a lot more if this body is just put back into Health.
At least there is a board with expertise in a wide range of areas and at least a wide, diverse range of healthy lifestyle projects are supported. Some of them—not as many as I would like to see, but some of them—such as sporting and recreational pursuits, artistic pursuits and other pursuits will have a much narrower, purely health professional type of emphasis if that body is put back into the department as is proposed.
Then, of course, there is the decision, which my friend and colleague Mr Pratt will be talking about as well, to merge the ESA back into JACS. I think that is fundamentally flawed. Worse, it flies in the face of all the lessons of recent history. It flies in the face of both the McLeod inquiry and the Auditor-General’s report No 3 of 2003, both of which recommend a stand-alone agency for emergency services. The McLeod report found that many of the problems experienced during those terrible fires of 2003 were exacerbated by a bureaucratic structure that hindered communications and front-line emergency responses under the old Emergency Services Bureau. The Auditor-General recommended that the bureau be replaced by a statutory authority. Millions have been spent effecting the establishment of the Emergency Services Authority, and now all that is money down the drain.
Commissioner Dunn, a highly distinguished individual, a major general in the Australian Army, who was brought in with great fanfare, has resigned in disgust as a result. And who can blame him? Nothing has been learnt by this government, so we will have a
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