Page 4602 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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their local ovals, upgrades in their schools. The local services that Canberrans pay their taxes for will be denied them as a result of this.
It will also undermine the ability of people to do what the chief planner has said this city was designed to do and we should be supporting. The chief planner is saying people should be able to, where possible, work where they live, work in the town centres. The ACT government, if they put thousands and thousands of public servants in this government office building in Civic, will be undermining the ability to do that.
They will have no credibility when they then approach the commonwealth and say, “What we would really like is for the commonwealth to put some of its government departments in Gungahlin or in Tuggeranong or in the other town centres.” The commonwealth are likely to turn around and say: “What are you doing? It’s your city. If you believe it’s a good thing, surely you should be showing the example.” And they will point to the 500 nondescript office workers, but they cannot tell us who they are or where they are or when it is going to be delivered in terms of a Gungahlin office. The chief planner has blown the whistle on that and he has said:
“While we are looking at moving some ACT Government departments to Gungahlin, we need to have bigger thinking …”
Yes, hear, hear! The chief planner has blown the whistle and, given the experience of the last chief planner when he spoke the truth to the government, I suppose this chief planner might want to be careful. He might want to be careful about putting out ideas that are actually contrary to what the government is doing. But we will support the chief planner in his independent role if he wants to make input into planning. If he wants to give frank and fearless advice to the government we will support him.
We will not do what ACT Labor did and sell him down the river. We will not do what ACT Labor did to Neil Savery and treat him in the most contemptible and disgraceful way. Of course Andrew Barr bears the bulk of responsibility for that. Yes, it was Jon Stanhope who was driving it but it was Andrew Barr who was letting him. It was Andrew Barr as the planning minister who just stepped aside and pushed Neil Savery in front of a bus and said: “Off you go, son. Do your best.”
I would make the comment that the chief planner has been courageous, I think, in saying this. I think he is speaking common sense but unfortunately for the government that is common sense that they are not actually following at the moment. That is not a policy that they are following at the moment.
Let us have a look at a number of other aspects of the government office block. This was originally to be a 30,000-square metre, 12-storey office building to house 1,500 public servants, to cost approximately $100 million to construct and roughly $30 million to fit out. It was a $130 million project when it started. Since as early as 2007, the Canberra Liberals’ position has been consistent. The co-location of a large number of ACT public servants makes relocating staff to the town centres unlikely. But of course it has morphed from what was a much smaller project, which would have taken fewer public servants away from the town centres and would have cost taxpayers much less, into a wholly owned government office building to accommodate several thousand public servants at a cost of $430 million.
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