Page 1450 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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So I am expecting that the minister will stand up and say, “We are too far down the track to pull back from this now.” That is actually not the case. As of last week, all bets were off on the planning and they have to go back to taws to plan both the block where the childcare centre is, directly on Dixon Drive, and the battleaxe block behind it. So while we are in this process we should look very carefully at whether this is the best way of doing it.
Clearly, as I have said, this government is unable to deliver on infrastructure projects. This is an infrastructure project. This is an infrastructure project which has been mishandled by this minister’s directorate. We have seen it likewise with the GDE, the prison, the arboretum, the enlarged Cotter Dam, the hospital car park and a number of other projects.
Perhaps this government should recognise that it is unable to deliver and it should let others who are capable of delivering on behalf of the people of the ACT deliver it for them. I think that these are very important issues. But this is a simple motion. It calls on the government to re-evaluate—it does not tell it what to do—the wisdom of developing the Dixon Drive childcare centre itself.
The fundamental question is: why should the government be developing it at all when there are non-government organisations willing to take on the project? I have spoken to a number of private sector developers, people who are in the childcare system, who would welcome the opportunity to buy the block of land and develop it, and other people who would be willing to develop it in concert with community sector organisations. Former Prime Minister John Howard used to say, “If it is in the Yellow Pages, why should government be doing that job?” Provision of childcare and more particularly the building of buildings wherein childcare is provided are, clearly, things that can be done by the non-government sector.
When you answer this question, it raises a number of other questions for the government. The government could look at how it might alternatively develop this site. Should the project be undertaken by a private developer alone, a community-based organisation or through some collaborative joint venture between the two sectors? In doing so, it should look at the approach it should take in the divestment of the land allocated for the project. Should it be given as a grant or should it be auctioned or disposed of via a direct sale? Should the government assist the developer, particularly if it is a community-based organisation, with a capital grant? The benefit, of course, to the government of handing the development over to the non-government sector is that the capital works budget and the ongoing depreciation and recurrent costs can be saved for more pressing government projects.
Perhaps unlike this government, I have spoken to a number of people in the non-government sector about the kinds of approaches that this motion suggests. There is support for non-government development of facilities like this. And that is it. It is a simple motion that asks the government to do what it perhaps should have done in the first place, hand over to the non-government sector, to an organisation who is capable of doing this on behalf of the community to the benefit of the community and not as a drain on taxpayers. I look forward to hearing about the outcomes of the government’s fresh consideration of this matter and I commend the motion to the Assembly.
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