Page 1591 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017
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Minister Rattenbury pointed out, it needs look no further than the home of the public service, the nation’s capital right now, to see how we are creating jobs and how we are stimulating the economy. The ACT is leading Australia in terms of business confidence and it would be prudent for the government to look a little bit more closely at this city that it spends some time in.
It is increasingly clear that the policy has not been properly thought out. No cost-benefit analysis has been done here, just like it was not done with the APVMA. A proposed template for ministers to complete has not yet been drafted. The justification has to occur by August, but decisions will not be made until December. Fiona Nash says all portfolio ministers need to be part of this process, but her colleague Barnaby Joyce says whole departments will not be moved and has already named some which are staying. Confusion and uncertainty reign.
I have already highlighted the costs to the Australian public service in terms of the inevitable brain drain and inefficiencies that come with silo organisational structures. No good for Canberra will come of decentralisation, and no good for the Australian public service will come out of decentralisation.
Again, I thank my colleagues on all sides of the chamber for their support of this motion. People out in the community have said to me, particularly when they have been signing my petition, that this policy is so absurd that surely it will not go ahead. Well, I sure hope it does not go ahead, but you cannot trust the federal government. As long as it remains a live option, it adversely affects our great Canberra community. The sooner it is killed off, the better. That is why I will not stop speaking up about this and neither, I hope, will this chamber.
I will conclude by again emphasising the words of the finance minister just 18 months ago when he said, “It is important to appropriately consider relevant local impacts.” He was talking about moving a major public service department. If this is true—and there is no reason why it should not be—then they should heed their own advice; they should look at this advice right now and apply it. In considering this proposal, in considering this thought bubble, they would be dropping it like it is hot.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Child placement and care plans
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (4.35): I move:
That this Assembly:
(1) notes:
(a) that the 2004 Vardon Report (“The Territory as Parent”) and the 2016 Glanfield Inquiry (“Report of the Inquiry”) both recommended that decisions made by ACT Child and Youth Protection Services (CYPS), or its predecessor, regarding a child’s placement or care plans be subject to external scrutiny or review;
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