Page 4604 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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Another is workforce efficiencies, $4.6 million. Churn is another. Apparently $2 million will be saved with churn because there will not be so much churn because you have got this one massive building. This will be a white elephant.
There is a reason why offices this big are rarely built. The reason is that it does not add up. It is not efficient to have buildings with a floor plan that is as big as is being proposed for this. It would take you a long time to walk from one end of the floor to another. You are losing a lot of your efficiencies. What you will get is something that would be very difficult to let out in the future because the demand simply would not be there for it.
In the brief time I have left, I would simply say this to the government: cut your losses now. You have wasted a lot of taxpayers’ money on this project already. It is a dud. It does not make any sense. The chief planner has blown the whistle. It does not make sense from a planning perspective. It does not make sense from a financial perspective. It is a reflection of this government’s priorities and we would say to them: “Abandon it. Abandon the project now and save taxpayers $432 million.”
MR BARR (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Education and Training and Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation) (10.17): It is groundhog day. We debated this exact motion, save for one sentence, only a matter of months ago.
Members interjecting—
MR BARR: The government’s position has not changed. We will not be supporting Mr Seselja’s motion today. Our decision to locate new office accommodation facilities in Gungahlin and in the city influences the overall government accommodation strategy. The decision is to see significant consolidation of current office accommodation and changes to our previous requirements for refits, refurbishments and relocations.
It is important to note—after hearing Mr Seselja’s presentation, people could be forgiven for thinking that these buildings will accommodate all of the ACT public service—that the proposed buildings will accommodate approximately 4,000 of the approximate 20,000 people who work for ACT government. The balance of those who work for the ACT government, 80 per cent or thereabouts, will continue to be located throughout Canberra, in town centres and in various suburban locations, in hospitals, schools, depots, health and community centres, shopfronts and the like. It is very important that this is clear. The overwhelming majority of ACT government employees work throughout the ACT community: they are not centrally located; they are located delivering services directly to Canberrans in each and every suburb of the ACT.
Our public service is diverse, but the government remains committed to accommodating it in buildings that maximise productivity and provide safe and professional workplaces for the staff who serve our community—something that the Leader of the Opposition obviously is not committed to—that provide more efficient
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