Page 119 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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People move around; it is not the case that everybody decides they will stay in a particular department because that is close to home. People move in and out of departments for job prospects, advancement, enrichment, all sorts of things.
The important thing here is that we believe there is a risk that if Immigration moves out of Belconnen there will be a detrimental impact on the Belconnen economy. But, more importantly, we of the Canberra Liberals believe moving public servants out of Canberra will have a detrimental impact upon the ACT economy as well. That is why I propose that we should insert into this motion a declaration that we—we should not have a problem with this—the members of the Legislative Assembly, would like to see that central offices of commonwealth government agencies remain in Canberra. This should be our first priority.
It is easy to pick off one region against another, and people do it as sport—north side versus south side. Some people would rather cross the floor than cross the lake, as an acquaintance once said to me. It is a good line. We make jokes and cast one region against the other. I am principally and first and foremost a member for Belconnen, but I also represent people across Canberra, and we should be standing up for people across Canberra and we should be standing up to this government and we should have stood up to the previous government when they wanted to move people out of Canberra. We should be standing up and saying, “No. Canberra is the seat of government. This is where government agencies should have their headquarters.” I do not have any problem with this; my colleagues do not have any problem with this notion, and I test the Labor Party to see whether they have a problem with this notion.
I am very happy to write to Minister Dutton or anyone else. I have put on the record the fact that I have already done it. I also do not have a problem with the Speaker conveying the strong views of this Assembly to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. However, I thought Dr Bourke’s motion was a little misdirected because it says, “Write to the federal government.” We need to be precise here, and I have suggested an amendment for being more precise about to whom the Speaker should write.
My first amendment is to omit paragraph (1)(a) because this should be an issue of bipartisanship. It is really about the Belconnen economy and it should not be about patting anyone on the back about how good they have been. Successive governments have contributed to Belconnen. I have been a critic of the extent to which successive governments have failed to contribute to Belconnen; for many years very little public works were done in Belconnen. There has been a bit of a change in the last little while with the building of the health building, but the Belconnen Arts Centre is half an arts centre and we cannot bring ourselves to build a full arts centre. If we are going to be envious, the previous Liberal government built a whole arts centre with a performance space for the Tuggeranong community a very long time ago and it has been upgraded by this government while the Belconnen community still does not have a performance space at its arts centre.
Some good work has been done, but it is very late. For four successive elections and through many Assemblies I have been calling for comprehensive master planning for Belconnen, and it has only been in the last year that the Labor Party has come on board. I moved a motion in 2007, maybe earlier, calling for comprehensive master
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