Page 1604 - Week 05 - Thursday, 15 May 2014
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new infrastructure funding and the request for assistance to progress the new convention centre project has been rejected.
It is also disappointing that funding has been cut to precisely the sorts of institutions we would look to for growth and employment at this time. All commonwealth funding for the national ICT Centre of Excellence, employing 70 Canberrans and developing the digital innovations of the future, will cease by 2017, $25 million has been taken from the University of Canberra’s centre for quality teaching and learning, and $6 million has been taken from the ANU’s Coombs policy forum.
The impacts of this budget will be felt beyond the ACT, through the capital region. We are the economic centre of a region growing towards one million people, the workplace of almost 30,000 New South Wales residents and a key source of income for towns spanning 12 surrounding shires. These towns too—their farmers, graziers, winemakers, tourist operators and other professionals—will feel the ongoing effects of the sweeping cuts which were announced.
Tomorrow, I will meet with the mayors of these shires through the South East Regional Organisation of Councils and will have the opportunity to listen to their communities’ perspective on the budget.
In the next few days, I will outline a range of steps which we will put in place to respond, in both the short and longer terms, to the impacts likely to hit Canberra. I have sought an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister and will meet with other first ministers this coming Sunday. Cabinet will meet over two days early next week for a post federal budget review and reconsideration of our own budget.
I will be establishing a high level Chief Minister’s advisory group to provide external counsel on strategic decision making in order to minimise impacts of the commonwealth’s decisions on our economy. I will also hold a number of roundtables to hear directly from various stakeholders on impacts of the federal budget on their areas. We will include young people, knowledge-based Canberra, construction and property, and community services.
Through these steps we will build a more thorough understanding of what is likely to happen over the next two to three years, talk to our community and business leaders, look at how we can support business confidence and present a united case to the commonwealth around the need to provide assistance to the ACT should the announced cuts go ahead.
Together, we will seek a genuine commitment from the commonwealth to work with the ACT in supporting our economy through the inevitable adjustments this budget will force upon us.
The ACT government’s response will also include our own budget, which we are in the process of finalising. The cuts outlined by the commonwealth will have a significant downward impact on the ACT budget. Let there be no mistake: the decisions that they have taken flow through to every revenue line and will put pressure on our expenditure lines including concessions, community services, health and education.
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