Page 1748 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
came here originally from the surrounding regions for work or came here to study. As Australia’s largest inland city, it has a natural attraction for people from rural and regional areas.
Canberra’s biggest growth spurt came in the 1960s as Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies sought to realise the federation vision of a truly national capital for a new nation. Since then Canberra’s only recorded population decline was in 1997 after the Howard government cuts. In the 1960s Menzies drew together in Canberra the commonwealth’s departments that were then scattered mainly in Melbourne and Sydney. These public servants brought their families and greatly expanded the population. This required new housing, schools, suburbs and services.
Many in Sydney and Melbourne have always resented Canberra usurping what they see as the natural role of Sydney or Melbourne as the national capital. The founders of our Federation chose Canberra as capital to avoid the poisonous divisions that making either Melbourne or Sydney the national capital would have inevitably created. Australians sometimes ambivalent attitude to Canberra is mild compared to the dislike and competitiveness between Melbourne and Sydney. I am sure that, should Mr Abbott become Prime Minister and he dispatches government departments off to “be amongst the people they are seeking to help”, interests in Melbourne and Sydney will be jealously watching to see which city gets the lion’s share of the carve up.
But what can we believe of Mr Abbott’s statements? He famously told Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report, “Don’t believe what I say, only what’s written down.” Is Mr Abbott already planning, like his mentor John Howard, to become the king of Kirribilli, shunning the Lodge in Canberra? Will we see the Prime Minister’s department relocated to Perth or perhaps to Mr Abbott’s north shore electorate at seaside Manly? I can see Liberal backbenchers and real estate agents in their electorates vying for a share of the public service and putting the US system of pork-barrelling to shame.
Amongst the highlights of Mr Abbott’s time as health minister was his “rock-solid, ironclad commitment” before the 2004 election to maintain the level of the Medibank safety net for vulnerable families. When happily back in office after the election, Mr Abbott threw out his promise and raised the threshold, cutting 400,000 people out of the scheme and raising medical costs for another 1.5 million people. Mr Abbott said that it was not a solid gold lie because he believed what he said at the time. He said he had no inkling of what he would do after the election.
It is risky, but let us take Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey’s statements at face value, that if elected they will abolish up to 20,000 public service jobs. Where will the 20,000 men and women marked for termination on the Liberal hit list come from? They will come from nearly a quarter of the ACT’s federal public service workforce. They will be living in every street in Canberra—our neighbours, our friends, our sons and daughters. And not just here in Canberra but in Queanbeyan, in Yass, in Goulburn, Bungendore, Braidwood and places in between. It will be a decimation of the Canberra and region employment base.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video