Page 4090 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
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the last 12 months here—but also in the appetite of the federal government to look at ways to shift jobs out of the ACT into some electorates across the country where they do not necessarily have the expertise or have not had the focus in the past on the particular work areas that are suggested to be relocated there. An example is to move ABS functions to Geelong, presumably alongside the NDIS headquarters. Both of these should have remained in Canberra, and I would expect that there would be unanimous support for that across the chamber.
We are also seeing the idea of moving other functions to northern New South Wales coastal areas. This is a real worry, because I think the commonwealth government has an ideological view that is not necessarily supportive of the long-term growth of the nation’s capital, or the fact that the commonwealth public service is our major employer—it is our BHP—and that the city was established to be the seat of government and have that focus; therefore our economy has developed around that.
With respect to our focus here, there are some things we can do to shield and protect the economy as we go through this period which we tend to see much more of under conservative governments, and certainly having regard to the vigour and appetite with which they are pursuing these cuts and reductions. These are going directly to the areas that the Deputy Chief Minister and I have been working on in the last few years around innovation and the digital side of our economy, and also around the higher education side, around attracting foreign investment and skills, promoting Canberra across the country with initiatives like Brand Canberra and some of the clever programs that have been run—the human brochure and all of those programs.
I refer also to the delegations that the Deputy Chief Minister and I have taken, particularly when we have gone to parts of Asia in the last two years to talk up Canberra and to make sure people understand the opportunities that are here, not just in development opportunities but in the richness of the institutions that are based in this town, the opportunity for research and partnering, if you look at higher education, with universities in other countries. There are such strengths here that are unique and particular to the ACT, and we have been out selling, talking about and promoting them for good reason. In the next 12 months some of that will definitely bring good results to the ACT.
Indeed the agreement that I signed with the Shenzhen mayor in October this year is already being utilised by different institutions and businesses in Canberra to promote connections, investment and opportunities with businesses in that part of China, in Shenzhen. I know we will have more to say on that in the not-too-distant future.
We have heard from other speakers about the Mr Fluffy buyback scheme. I was interested to hear the questions from the opposition today about the impact on the bottom line. The impact on the bottom line will be significant, particularly over the next two years. But as I said on the radio this morning, perhaps if you had modelled the impact on the bottom line it would have clouded some of our decisions around the buyback scheme, because the bottom line will be negatively affected by this buyback scheme, without a doubt, and we will have to show that in its full force either in the budget update or in the budget, depending on the timing of some of those decisions.
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