Page 2728 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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Given the problems with portable long service leave, if someone permanently leaves the sector, leaves the territory, goes to work for a government organisation and ceases to work for the community sector, the contributions that will have been made over a long period of time by employers will stay not with the employer but with the Long Service Leave Authority. This will drive up the cost of the individual employer. They will not be able to plough that money, which is now no longer needed, back into their organisation. It will stay with the Long Service Leave Authority.
There may be some spin-offs, it may over time reduce the multiplier rate and the rate at which contributions have to be made, but that is a very blunt instrument and it does not address the needs of particular employers within the community sector. That is certainly the case with employers in the other areas as well. I think that this is a very important area where the community does need some certainty and it is incumbent upon the minister to make perfectly clear to the community what her plans are for the security industry and the retail industry as areas that she has speculated about as being the future area for the extension of the portable long service leave scheme.
Turning to other areas in the Chief Minister’s Directorate, we cannot go by without commenting on the great big office building—it has another name, the government office building—and reflecting upon the impact that this will have on the city and the impact that this will have on taxpayers.
First and foremost, we must remember that this is a government that has an appalling track record in the administration of capital works projects. (Second speaking period taken.) By its own admission, this is a government that says that this is the largest capital works project that we have seen in the ACT. Consider, for instance, that the Gungahlin Drive extension started off at $56 million, and it is now $180 million and counting and it is still an uncompleted road. I recall it was in about August 2004—probably earlier than that—that this Assembly passed enabling legislation to allow the Gungahlin Drive extension to commence, and we are still waiting for the Gungahlin Drive extension to be completed. It is a catastrophe.
If you look at all of the other mismanagement of capital works programs, Mr Corbell probably has the best list. There are the North Weston ponds; there are the north Canberra ponds. They have blown out by tens of millions of dollars, and in the case of the north Weston ponds there has been a doubling in cost and they have come in under spec. The north Canberra ponds have increased in cost by over $10 million and, taking into account the money that came from the Commonwealth, it is a $31 million project which had to be substantially re-scoped because the pipes were too small and the storage tanks were too small. Again, it was under spec in the first instance.
The emergency services headquarters are still causing controversy years after the fateful decision to move the ESA headquarters to Fairbairn. I wonder which bright spark originally thought of that, because I think that the ACT government and the people of the ACT have been monumentally badly served by the cost blow-outs there. Even as recently as last night, the unions and the opposition came together to again cast doubt about the appropriateness of the building—whether it is fit for purpose and whether it will ever meet the needs of the Emergency Services Authority.
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