Page 2770 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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and ministers across the board need to answer why that is the case. If the answer is that the public servants are not doing what they are told, that is a hard one to buy.
I think most public servants respond when their minister calls. I would say that the vast bulk of public servants in this territory are not only hard working but when their minister gives them a call or when ministers give direction about what they want, most public servants respond very quickly and often very effectively. If it is not happening, you have to go back to why the leadership is not being shown. Why is the leadership not being shown by the government on these issues?
We can only conclude that it is because ministers are not interested in showing the kind of leadership that we would expect and which the community deserves. The community does deserve this. The community does deserve better than what we are getting.
I will finish on infrastructure. In relation to infrastructure, what it requires is the will, the desire and the vision to make things better. It requires the will and desire to implement better the infrastructure, the will and desire to make the structural reforms that are needed. There are no structural reforms here. There is nothing that says how things are going to be done better. There are simply a few words on a few pages that were shoddily and hastily put together. It can only undermine confidence in terms of investment in our city.
We see the failure to sell blocks of land just recently. We can surmise. We can certainly hypothesise about what are some of the reasons why those investments have not been made and why those blocks were not sold. Part of it is the uncertainty because there is not the kind of leadership we would like to see.
I would pose a question to Mr Barr. Mr Barr mentioned in his earlier contribution about releasing blocks of land in terms of low-cost accommodation. How much rigour and analysis went into those announcements? Was that part of a broader plan? Was that part of a general broader plan which really set out some targets, which set out some milestones in terms of the release of that type of land? If you get that happening then you have more potential to get some investor certainty. We are not seeing that at the moment and I think that we do see the results of that.
I would like to make mention of the RSPCA. The committee heard from the RSPCA on the first day of hearings. Mr Michael Linke, the chief executive officer, noted:
In terms of our funding base, our need for funding and our operational expenditure have more than doubled in the last five years, and we have enjoyed some increased funding from the government. Our funding has increased from about $200,000 a year to a peak last year of $780,000, which included a $100,000 emergency payment as a result of the global financial crisis.
We submitted a budget proposal to the ACT government seeking similar funding this year. We have been advised that our core funding will not increase but there will be other avenues to add additional funding to try and match that level of $780,000 in the 2009-10 financial year. So we are hoping that that funding is matched in the coming year.
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