Page 1460 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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Perhaps he has an interest in science and research and was looking to the CSIRO at Black Mountain for a career or at one of the cooperative research centres. CSIRO is losing $116 million over four years. Its workforce is to be literally decimated with over 500 or a tenth of its jobs to go. Many will be from Black Mountain. And the next round of CRC grants worth $80 million have been scrapped.
If he wants to study at the University of Canberra or the ANU, and perhaps wants to defer for a few years, he really is stepping into the unknown. He really has so little idea what fees he might be charged with the deregulation of fees in the budget. Most likely it will be a higher HECS debt.
There is another three-word slogan that we have not heard from the Liberals: fees for PhDs, but now they will be introduced. I could go on, but I will just finish with a sentence about the budget by Ross Gittins in Fairfax Media today:
Only those people right at the bottom of the ladder have been hit hard—unemployed young people, the sick poor and, eventually aged and disabled pensioners—but who cares about them?
Not Tony Abbott, Zed Sesleja or the Canberra Liberals, it seems.
Debate interrupted in accordance with standing order 74 and the resumption of the debate made an order of the day for a later hour.
Sitting suspended from 12.26 to 2.30 pm.
Questions without notice
Transport—light rail
MR HANSON: My question is to the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services. Minister, what is your and your directorate’s role, aside from the subcommittee of cabinet, in the development of light rail?
MR RATTENBURY: As Mr Hanson has rightly touched on, I do, of course, have a role as part of the subcommittee of cabinet. But with TAMS specifically, the Director-General of TAMS is present on the board of Capital Metro, as are a number of other directors-general from ACT government agencies. TAMS played an initial role in hosting the Capital Metro Agency in its early inception and has provided a level of what might be described as corporate support to the agency in its early stages. Outside that I cannot think of anything in particular. Obviously, though, TAMS will play an ongoing role in working with Capital Metro in the provision of the many services that TAMS provides for the integration of road services, and obviously for footpaths and cycle path connections. For those kind of infrastructure questions there will obviously be a strong crossover between TAMS and the Capital Metro Agency. The other thing that TAMS has done, as have a number of ACT government agencies, is to second staff to the Capital Metro Agency with particular skills that the agency needs.
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