Page 1577 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017
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That was just about moving a department to the other side of the city, let alone out of our entire region. What has changed in 18 months? I urge the federal government to heed its own words. Decentralisation will affect our economy across the board. Every industry will feel the blow of uncertainty, population decrease and drain of expertise out of the city that it will cause.
As I mentioned, this is more than political for me. Just six months ago I too was a federal public servant. Arriving in Canberra for a graduate program in 2008, I had no idea what I was in for. I did not expect I would be here for long to be honest. But, to my surprise, I quickly fell in love with Canberra. The more I fell in love with Canberra, the more I put my roots down here. I made more and more friends, both in and outside the public service. I bought a house and introduced two dogs into my life.
Canberra is not just a workplace. It is a home. Canberrans are not chess pieces. We have lives we have built here. Couples will be forced to make hard decisions under this policy. Children and families will have to consider uprooting their lives, their schools, their sporting clubs, their friends. Families will be forced to choose between their jobs and their communities. You cannot put a price on how much Canberra means to Canberrans. But there is a real, human cost to the political games the federal government is playing.
There is a real impact on the efficiency and expertise of the Australian public service as a result. No good for the Australian public service will come of decentralisation out of Canberra. Federal public sector agencies are currently being compelled to justify their continued existence in Canberra, that is, justify why they would want to stay in the city where they have ease of access to the parliament and to their minister; justify why they would stay in the city where they have built a workforce with invaluable corporate knowledge; and justify why they would stay in the city where they benefit from collocation with other public service departments.
Am I missing something here? In the words of Tony Boyd’s article in the Australian Financial Review earlier this month:
Wise heads familiar with the symbiotic relationship between the public service and government understand that the main federal policy and service delivery departments should be co-located to strengthen the opportunities for collaboration and information exchange.
That does not even taken into account the cost in travel alone, which will be astronomical as public servants are flown back and forth, to and from Canberra, from whatever region they end up in. That also does not count the cost of public servants forced to choose, who might quit their agency and try to find another job here in Canberra. These public servants might be in highly skilled, highly technical jobs. The capability and core competencies of that agency, and of many agencies, is then at risk.
This policy does not create one job. Instead, it speaks to the failure of the federal Liberal-National government to create jobs in rural and regional areas. This policy is
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