Page 863 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019

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When we tear away a department or an agency, or a significant portion thereof, and move it somewhere else, we dramatically impact upon the surrounding businesses and organisations left behind, not least the absolute centre of that organisation itself. Let us not forget that this policy is not about creating jobs. It is about moving jobs, the majority of which have now been filled by individuals from outside these new locations.

Surely the federal government can see that on balance this does not stack up. Surely this is not the answer. The consequences of bad decentralisation policy are too great to just pursue willy-nilly. In fact, the potential consequences are devastating: uncertainty undermining economic growth, less activity in town centres impacting on small business in the broader community, a brain drain away from the nation’s capital and a less efficient Australian public service.

That does not include the disruption to the lives of Canberrans who have families, who have friends, who have networks deeply rooted in the ACT. These are lives deeply rooted in the ACT. The federal coalition government must stop politicising regional jobs. You only need to look at the calamitous move of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority and the breathtaking proposed split of the disgraced Murray-Darling Basin Authority to question this ill-conceived strategy. Let us call this out for what it is really is: pork-barrelling in an attempt to carve up votes.

Let us be very clear: retaining Australian public service jobs in Canberra and supporting regional Australia are not mutually exclusive. It is in the best interests of all Australians to have a federal public service that works as efficiently as possible. Attacking and decimating Canberra and its jobs is not the answer.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Dangerous dog legislation

MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (4.04): I move:

That this Assembly:

(1) notes that:

(a) there were 485 officially reported serious dog attacks in Canberra in 2017-18;

(b) in 2017-18 the annual increase in dog attacks in Canberra was 30 percent over 5 years;

(d) the annual rate of increase in dog attacks in one year is now about 70 percent;

(e) in 2016-17 the average rate of dog attack reported in Canberra was one a day;

(f) in 2018 the average rate of dog attack reported in Canberra has doubled to two a day;

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