Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee report Operation, effectiveness, and consequences of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Location of Corporate Commonwealth Entities) Order 2016. Here we have the report into the government's decision to move the APVMA from Canberra to the University of New England in Armidale and, with it, start a centre of excellence in regulatory science which will not only assist in skills shortages within the APVMA itself but also assist with state government bodies that are similarly experiencing skills shortages when it comes to regulatory scientists.

This committee was set up essentially as a ruse for Joel Fitzgibbon to pursue the Deputy Prime Minister over false claims of pork-barrelling, and the conduct of the inquiry itself and the report as you read it similarly bear that fact out. This was nothing more than a political exercise by the Labor Party, who would not know regional Australia if they fell over it.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Where do you live?

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am happy to go to the detail, Senator Polley.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To the chair, Senator McKenzie.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry; I direct my comments to the chair.

The report actually selectively quoted a range of material from submissions. Unfortunately, the majority of submissions—88.5 per cent of submissions—supported decentralisation and, indeed, many of them went on to support the move of the APVMA directly. They were not quoted; they were actually derided in the majority report—seemingly, they were not relevant to the terms of reference. Well the terms of reference went specifically to the government's decision to back its election promise and move the APVMA from Canberra to Armidale and, in that, looking at any other matters. It went to the very heart of decentralisation.

It is very sad to see the Labor Party now, following Whitlam's decisions around decentralisation and, in the mid-eighties, shifting CSIRO from Sydney to Hobart. There were a lot of scientists in CSIRO who were very, very upset that they could no longer kayak across the harbour to work—I think it was in about 1985—but they have found a very welcoming home in Hobart. There were some staff issues in the beginning, but now, when you look at what an iconic, world-class scientific program is being conducted down there, particularly with the focus on Antarctic research, no-one could doubt that that was not a fantastic move.

Similarly, there is the New South Wales government's decision to move the department of agriculture from Sydney to Orange. We heard throughout this inquiry from a councillor in Orange, Mr Kidd, who said, 'Yes, there were some problems'. I think the direct quote of Mr Kidd was, 'We'll all be rooned, Hanrahan' when the announcement was made to move the department of ag out to Orange. I said, 'How is it now, Mr Kidd?' He said, 'Well, we'd have a riot in the streets of Orange for the first time if anybody suggested moving it back.' I think that goes to the broader point: it is a concern sometimes if you, personally, are needing to shift, but when we looked at the actual evidence, there had been 200 job applications to the agency and, indeed, those younger staff within the agencies were really quite looking forward to the move to Armidale.

But going to my critique of the report, which we are still getting to, about selectively quoting from the evidence and choosing not to include more than 88.5 per cent of it: the opposition senators who put together the majority report claimed the terms of reference did not cover decentralisation. That simply was not the case. We had submissions from regional councils right across the country, from regional development corporations right around the country, who not only said they supported decentralisation, but also made very articulate, well thought out cases of why they should be considered as a potential space and place for relocation of government agencies and jobs. The only council actually quoted in the majority report is the City of Cessnock. That is an ALP dominated municipality within the Labor held seat of Hunter. Joel Fitzgibbon likes to make reckless claims of pork-barrelling, but it is pretty hard—that would mean we would not be spending any money in regional Australia as a government. We hold most of the seats—that is the reality—so actually servicing those communities as a government is not pork-barrelling.

The other issue the Labor Party relied on quintessentially encapsulated the Labor Party's understanding of regional Australia. The shadow minister commissioned some research from the Parliamentary Library to look at the government order that said 'these agencies needed to be located outside of 150 kilometres from a capital city'. Joe Citizen, Mary Sixpack, Mary Housecoat: all of us would think a capital city or the centre of a city is the GPO. But, dear shadow minister, in order to fit his political argument, used a measurement that saw places like Sorrento and country towns like Romsey in my home state of Victoria counted as 'Melbourne', and the outer boundary of that particular geographic area became where he measured 150 kilometres. So he actually cut out a lot of potentially suitable places for relocation. When we looked at going from the GPO, we added 19 potential locations. Unfortunately, Joel, Romsey is not in Melbourne. I could go on with Brisbane and Sydney examples, but I am going to run out of time.

I want to highlight some of the communities in regional Victoria that made a great case to this inquiry about why they should be selected. There was the City of Greater Bendigo. Bendigo is a great goldmining town and is where my office is located. A lot of people think that decentralisation—moving agencies and jobs out of capital cities to the regions—is doing the regions a favour, is giving a bit of economic development and is putting some brains into a country town, where clearly there are not any. I could go on and on with the stereotypes. But what we saw in this inquiry was regional capital after regional capital stand up and say, 'It's in your best interests to put those jobs here, not just for the economic interests but for policy outcomes.'

For instance, the city of greater Bendigo has a great tradition of financial expertise, with the Bendigo Bank et cetera. Having that sort of capacity makes Bendigo an ideal candidate for relocating the Regional Investment Bank, for instance. I know they were in the mix for that; unfortunately, they lost out. Similarly, Wodonga made a great case that being in the middle of the Murray-Darling Basin, being part of the communities directly affected by the decisions of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and given its proximity to Canberra and Melbourne make it an ideal place to locate some of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority staff. That is fantastic. I know they have welcomed the 10 jobs that have come to them locally.

I have to put this on the record. I recommend anyone actually interested in this issue read the dissenting report of government senators and participate in the House committee into this exact issue. Unfortunately, this committee had a day's hearing in Canberra, did not go to Armidale, where the APVMA is going to be housed—there were so many issues fleshed out, but we did not go there—and did not go anywhere else in regional Australia except Townsville, where we had a half-day hearing. We had five councils from Victoria and five from New South Wales on a teleconference panel and they had roughly five minutes apiece to make their case. That simply was not good enough. I think that to do this issue justice it is appropriate to have a committee that will travel throughout regional Australia and flesh out the great benefits that decentralisation of government agencies and jobs can bring not just to the communities where they will be housed but indeed to the governments that they serve.

In terms of participating in this inquiry and the outcomes, I know there were claims made around the finance minister's involvement. The government acted with integrity every single minute of the application of this government order, and to suggest otherwise is simply a misrepresentation of the truth. We absolutely back the decentralisation agenda and very much welcome the government's moves in that direction.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the inquiry that I chaired into the location of corporate Commonwealth entities order. It is disappointing that Senator McKenzie has chosen to disparage in the way that she has the work of the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee. The committee undertook that work with the seriousness that the finance and public administration references committee approaches all of the tasks it is allocated by this chamber.

It is true that through the inquiry there was a campaign from National Party members of parliament to broaden the focus of the committee beyond the focus that was set out in the terms of reference for the committee. The Senate asked us to look at the government's decision to relocate the APVMA. The National Party established a campaign, including writing to a range of regional councils, asking them to submit information to us about the much broader question of decentralisation of government services and departments.

I put on the record that Labor is enormously interested in that question and sympathetic to the agenda set out by those councils, but the place to progress that was not this committee. This committee had narrow terms of reference, and we fulfilled the mandate provided to us by the Senate. I should note that Labor members in the other place, in fact, supported the establishment of a joint committee that could examine this question of decentralisation, drawing on representation from both the Senate and the other place. Unfortunately, the government did not choose to support that in the other place, and we now have a House-only committee, dominated by government members of parliament. That is a great loss to a policy agenda that could have been fleshed out by a much broader range of participants.

I want to make a couple of remarks about the findings of the committee. The first is this: that this was a decision to move one government agency to just one electorate—the electorate that happened to be held by the Deputy Prime Minister. It was a decision that was announced during an election campaign. During the course of our inquiry, we asked all of the regional councils that appeared before us which of them had had the chance to make their pitch to government about why their town would be deserving of the $25 million investment that the government has elected to make in Armidale. The answer to this was, of course, none—not a single one of those councils had had that opportunity. When asked, 'What would be a good process for decentralisation?' all of them said, 'It ought to be transparent, and we all ought to have the chance to apply. We all ought to have the chance to make the case for our community to receive the $25 million that, on this occasion, has been allocated just to Armidale.'

Senator McKenzie referred to the role of the finance minister. The evidence from the departmental officials in the Department of Finance was very clear. They basically said, 'The finance minister had this role. It's his job to sign off on it, and so we did it.' There was an opportunity, of course, for the finance minister to apply a very different kind of scrutiny to a decision of this kind. The finance minister could have looked at the cost-benefit analysis and scrutinised whether or not the benefits that would arise for Australia from a relocation of this kind were really worth the $25 million investment. But the evidence from the department was that that was not part of the consideration. It strikes me that this narrow reading of the finance minister's role in the making of a general policy order is, at minimum, a missed opportunity for the finance minister to exert his authority in making sure that the decisions of government properly reflect the social and economic interests of the country.

The assessment around economic benefit was, of course, that there was very little economic benefit at all from a move of this kind and, on the contrary, there were very great risks associated with the relocation of this agency. The estimate from Ernst and Young about the financial cost to government of the relocation was that it would be $35 million in the short term. In the last budget, the government allocated $25 million for the relocation of this agency. I understand that Mr Joyce has indicated that the balance of that will need to be made up from within his own department. As it stands, the move of this agency is not fully funded.

It is also the case, of course, that additional costs emerge every moment that this sad story drags on, because many of the staff have indicated that they do not wish to move to Armidale. The workaround for this currently being contemplated by the APVMA is a complete reworking of the computer network. The cost of that is unknown, but the evidence from the then CEO of the APVMA was that it would be many millions of dollars. There has been no indication from government about whether funding for this element of the project will be provided nor indeed what the total cost will be. There is some indication that the total cost of this farrago could be as much as $60 million.

What I say to those listening is that, if we are to spend sums of this kind to move agencies, it ought not be done because it is politically convenient to provide a significant investment to one electorate during an election campaign. There ought to be a more substantial basis for analysis than this, and unfortunately, through all of the committee's deliberations, it was not at all clear that that deliberation took place in any serious way.

The prospect of harm to the agency's capability is very real. Industry body after industry body lined up to tell us that at the hearings. You know you have a problem—quite a serious problem—when the National Farmers' Federation turns up to criticise a National Party decision. We have a very serious problem where all of the businesses who are reliant on the APVMA to approve in a timely way their importation of chemical product are deeply concerned that that capability will be compromised by the move of this agency to Armidale.

Regional communities should have access to public sector jobs. We heard repeatedly about the damage that has been done to regional communities by this government's obsession with slashing public sector jobs—an obsession which is felt most keenly in regional Australia. In Townsville, where we visited, 200 jobs have been taken out of the ATO. The Department of Veterans' Affairs has been rapidly downsized despite the fact that Townsville is host to a very significant Defence community. The Department of Human Services has been subject to repeated job cuts. Regional communities should have jobs and they should not have to live in the Deputy Prime Minister's seat to get them.

Question agreed to.