Page 124 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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conversation—from his end, I might add—in which he told me how concerned he was and what a significant impact it would have on his business, which he had spent many years building up. He was very passionate about it. I think it underlined that sense of fear and uncertainty that business owners in the area are feeling around the prospect of this possible move.
As other members have touched on, such a move would also significantly impact on the city’s traffic and transport plans. Depending on the final location chosen, if the decision goes ahead, it will potentially create new traffic issues that could take some significant time and certainly cost to respond to.
We are very lucky in the ACT to have the town centre structure in the way we do and to have those employment and business nodes spread around the city, and not have everybody channelled into the CBD. There is a real opportunity for us in that, in having reduced transport needs. People are able to live closer to work and therefore have other transport options.
I take on board what Mrs Dunne said. People will ultimately work in different places from where they live. That will be the case for some. Certainly, with not everybody having to travel to the city, it presents a range of transport planning opportunities that I think are very positive, particularly for some of the active forms of transport. If you have a job in the Belconnen town centre and you live in Belconnen, there are a range of walking and cycling options that open up, and that perhaps are not there in most people’s minds if they are working further afield. So there are certainly some real positives in those sorts of employment options.
The kinds of disruptions that we would see in the ACT as a result of this decision by the federal government are unfortunately frustratingly common. Such significant proposals have an impact on the city that perhaps is not considered from a commonwealth government perspective, because they have a different set of motivations. But the local impacts are very significant and are ones that we need to bring to our federal colleagues’ attention. We need to highlight them so that they do weigh those factors up when they are making their final decisions.
These impacts start to have a cumulative detrimental impact on Canberrans and the local community, as well as the local economy. We have all heard stories of some of the impacts on the Woden town centre that have arisen from a decline in public service numbers in that town centre. Certainly the anecdotal stories indicate that the reduction of foot traffic in the area has had a significant impact on businesses in that area.
This motion goes to the very issue of large machinery of government changes, otherwise known in this town as the much feared “MOG”. As Prime Minister and Cabinet departmental secretary Ian Watt has warned, the danger of expensive and disruptive major changes like this is that they can lead to great inefficiencies and reduced productivity, not to mention the impact on the morale of the workers involved.
I think that is another consideration. There is the local Canberra impact, but there is also a real question mark about the effectiveness and efficiency involved in having
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