Page 849 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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They are easy targets of policies like these that are misguided and reek of desperation at a time when warring National Party members fight to hold on to their seats. Instead of coming up with their own ideas, their own policies, their own acts of job creation, they are plundering Canberra, plundering the Canberra community, to serve their own needs instead of the needs of the broader Australian public for the public good.
It is not good enough and it has never been good enough. It is incumbent on us, as representatives of this territory, to denounce this assault on our city. As the federal government doubles down on this asinine policy, it is now more important than ever to do this. It is timely to pull apart this policy that is supposedly about enlivening regional communities. Is it really having the meaningful impact it is supposed to have? Is it really worth continuing with?
Let us look at data produced by the Australian Public Service Commission, data included in its submission to the federal government’s very own inquiry into regional development and decentralisation. From mid-2013, just before the coalition took office, to mid-2017, inner Sydney gained 2,000 public servants, inner Melbourne gained 850 public servants and inner Brisbane gained 1,260 public servants. That is more than 4,000 public servants in total.
During that same period, how many public servants did regional Australia gain? None. It lost 748 public service jobs. How many public servants did Canberra gain? None. It lost 6,700 public service jobs. That was bad enough, but it has got worse. If there was ever an example of poor policy, it is the shambolic move of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Armidale, announced in 2017 under this so-called decentralisation policy.
Many staff have voted with their feet, opting to stay in Canberra or simply to leave the agency altogether. The debacle has resulted in the resignation of the authority’s chief executive and a large pool of scientists. As it stands, 40 of the agency’s 180 staff, more than one-fifth, have opted to remain in the ACT. Not only was the move a short-sighted pork-barrelling exercise on the part of former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, a politician who continues to wreak havoc among his own party and more broadly, but also it was poorly executed.
The APVMA admitted that the new arrangement is increasing costs otherwise saved by keeping scientists in Canberra. The move also threatens to blow out the agency’s budget. Armidale does not offer a single building suitable to house APVMA staff, resulting in the need to build a new one. But at the heart of the problem is people. For too many federal politicians, Canberra is just a workplace. It might be just a workplace for them, but it is not just a workplace for Canberrans. It is our home. Our roots are here and our lives are here. Now we have a situation where many of APVMA’s valued staff just did not move. Decades of corporate knowledge is gone because they quit.
A recent Senate inquiry found concerns about the APVMA’s safety and about the APVMA’s efficiency—that there has been a huge loss of scientific expertise. The inquiry found that its international reputation is at stake. I repeat that its international
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