Page 650 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020
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continue to expand and improve their service delivery model because the operation is about 55 years old.
The operators want to provide the services that are needed by the public. This issue is not about capacity or space, because I have been told that the crematorium has recently purchased a couple of acres more land alongside Gungahlin Drive. The operators indicated that if they are told about the specific needs of communities—specific cultural or religious groups—they can incorporate those into their plans for the new area. The opposition does not have concerns about ashes being scattered—I asked about this during the briefing and was given an answer by the directorate—but some Canberra families choose to have their funerals interstate. The reasons are many and varied, including personal family reasons, religious reasons and commercial reasons. It could be about having flowing water—rivers—in which to scatter ashes.
The opposition believes the government is providing a solution to a problem that does not exist except with respect to its budget woes. If there was great demand for additional crematorium services, I believe a private contractor would enter into the market. This government is not an expert in running crematoria; it has not done it before. The other concern that has been expressed is that the government is choosing to set up its operation 200 metres from the gates of the current crematorium. For all the talk about competitive neutrality, this is bound to have an impact on the current operator, which fears it will have to cut staff. The competition and difference between the public and the private sector will impact on the current business. It may create an artificial socio-economic divide. It may also create even more red tape and government interference.
The opposition is not concerned so much about the government providing a publicly run crematorium; a large part of the opposition’s concern is about the decision to put this publicly run crematorium 200 metres from the existing crematorium. Any private business facing that kind of competition would be devastated to have the government enter that market for the first time. It is not friendly or supportive for local businesses. The government has indicated that this is because of specific land zoning requirements; however, it is strange that it has been built with the intention of being portable, which seems to imply that there will not be additional space within the facility for family members, which was one of the reasons that the directorate staff indicated the current crematorium was perhaps unsuitable.
The current operators also say that they were told about the plans but they were not consulted early on. The operators said that if anyone had raised concerns with them about capacity issues or religious or cultural issues, they would have done their best to address them. They remain committed to doing that; they will do whatever they can to address these issues. It is what they have done for many years, and what they will continue to do.
The government said the ACT simply does not have enough services—that the ACT has one crematorium per 400,000 people and New South Wales has one per 150,000 people. But in New South Wales there are geographic issues. It is a much bigger area and people expect to have a crematorium within their community; they do not expect
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