Senator HUMPHRIES (7:05 PM) —These appropriation bills present an opportunity to discuss a number of matters tonight. First of all, I want to talk about a few matters concerning the ACT and some real concerns I have about developments in the provision of services to people in the ACT. I spoke yesterday in another debate about the baby care payment announcement made by the Leader of the Opposition, Mark Latham. I said that the concern I had about this, and indeed a number of other Labor policies that have been announced recently, is that they bear the hallmark of having been put together with some haste and not having been well thought through. The particular issue I drew attention to with respect to that policy announcement was that one of the ways Labor had cobbled together the money to be able to fund this so-called baby care payment was by significantly reducing spending on the National Capital Authority, to the tune of approximately $11.9 million a year.

I want to come back to that issue and explain to honourable senators what that would mean to the role that the NCA plays in protecting and enhancing the planned national capital, which is the ACT. The budget of the National Capital Authority is just under $30 million a year, so a reduction in that budget of about $12 million represents a cut of something like 40 per cent in the operations of the NCA. Members opposite have characterised this announcement with just a little bit of ex post facto rationalisation as an acknowledgment of the NCA having too extensive a role in the planning of the city, suggesting that its functions should be withdrawn from many areas that it currently operates in and be reduced, essentially, to the parliamentary triangle. There are a number of issues about that and I do not want to debate that aspect of the announcement tonight. I do want to point out that the suggestion that, by reducing the areas of planning responsibility of the NCA to just the parliamentary triangle and a few other areas of ceremonial significance, such as Anzac Parade, the Australian War Memorial and so on, you can somehow achieve a saving of 40 per cent of the outlays of the National Capital Authority is simply nonsense.

The National Capital Authority does have responsibility for administering the National Capital Plan. That covers essentially the whole of the ACT. But its responsibilities for the areas of the National Capital Plan outside the parliamentary triangle and the areas in question are not as extensive as they are within the parliamentary triangle. In other words, it has a responsibility to designate broad land uses that might be made in, for example, rural areas of the ACT, but its responsibility does not extend to, for example, approving particular works that go on within those areas. At the present time, for example, I understand the NCA is considering issues to do with the rebuilding of rural villages that were destroyed in the bushfires in January last year and it will decide whether it is appropriate to have nonurban settlements in those areas or not—a fairly simple decision to make, in one sense. But it will not make decisions about the size of buildings in those villages, the configuration of landscapes and issues that are appropriately the responsibility of the ACT Planning Authority.

When you consider that across all of the areas that the NCA is responsible for, you realise that a relatively small part of its operations is covered by those areas outside the parliamentary triangle—a relatively small proportion of its responsibilities. It follows from that that a relatively small proportion of its budget is spent outside the parliamentary triangle. The fact is that, when you exclude the parliamentary triangle, you are excluding a very small part of the responsibility of the NCA in a day-to-day sense. If you cut 40 per cent of the NCA's budget, you are cutting jobs and essential functions that fall within the parliamentary triangle—functions to do with the maintenance of national areas, such as Commonwealth Place, Reconciliation Place and the avenues that define the parliamentary triangle. You are cutting programs like Summer in the Capital, Celebrate Australia Day, Tropfest and a range of other things that the NCA conducts to promote the national capital in a way which behoves its role as the chief promoter of this city. You have to cut its building program—things like the enhancing of the Commonwealth Place foreshore, which is currently under way, the National Emergency Services Memorial, the project to relandscape and reconstruct the Old Parliament House gardens, and the monument to the centenary of women's suffrage. Those are the sorts of things the NCA does, and those are the sorts of things which inevitably, with a cut of 40 per cent—a cut of almost $50 million over the next four years—you will have to see significantly compromised or go by the board altogether. You simply do not make a saving of that order and preserve those essential functions of the National Capital Authority.

In making comments about this matter yesterday, the shadow finance minister, Bob McMullan, took a different approach as to why the opposition would be able to save 40 per cent by cutting the NCA's functions back to, essentially, the parliamentary triangle. He talked about the elimination of duplication and said that the NCA would save a large amount of money by not having to duplicate the planning functions that are conducted presently by the ACT Planning Authority. Firstly, given that its responsibility outside the parliamentary triangle in a planning sense is much less onerous than its responsibilities inside the parliamentary triangle, that argument falls down almost at the first hurdle. Secondly, there is not a great deal of duplication, although there are areas where duplications do occur and, when they do occur, they cause significant problems. I think we should accept that there is some need to do something about that problem, but achieving it with a saving of nearly $50 million is not the way to deal with it.

Thirdly, let us suppose that there is a duplication and that it is better to have those particular planning functions conducted by the ACT government rather than the Commonwealth government through the NCA. Let us make that assumption for one moment. Would you not then logically be required to transfer some of that budget currently operated by the NCA to the ACT Planning Authority for it to be able to perform those functions in the areas being vacated by the NCA? Isn't that logical? Of course, Labor will not do that because they do not get their saving. They do not get their $50 million to throw into Mark Latham's latest shoot-from-the-hip idea—the baby payment. They want that money. They have to find the money, so any old saving will do. The saving in this case is ill-thought through, bears the hallmarks of having been discovered in a fairly short space of time—there is not really a thought-through policy on this—and frankly betrays an attitude on the part of the Australian Labor Party which says: `Cutting Canberra really doesn't matter. Cutting Canberra is okay, because we have three safe seats sitting in the ACT, and we can treat you with contempt because it just doesn't matter. In other parts of Australia a cut to the ACT will probably win us a few votes and a few plaudits.' Okay, you can run that line in Western Sydney and in the suburbs of Melbourne and places like that, but you cannot also come back and parade yourselves as the party that cares about Canberra, because you do not care about Canberra.

Your announcement about abolishing the budget and the programs in the former National Office for the Information Economy would sacrifice 160 jobs in the city—160 jobs will go by the board because you think Canberra is dispensable; you think the votes in Canberra are not seriously at risk. With this NCA announcement, the Australian Labor Party will save another 40 jobs—another $12 million. That adds up to 200 jobs in the ACT lost under this proposed alternative government and not a blush among them in making those announcements. I hope that some of the members opposite appreciate that this decision has been made without due thought to the implications for the ACT. I hope in particular that my fellow ACT senator, Senator Lundy, will stand up for the ACT in the internal organs of her party and say: `This is not acceptable. The people of the ACT are not to be disregarded so lightly. The ACT and its essential functions are not a milch cow to pay for Labor promises generally in other parts of Australia.' I hope that these sorts of announcements will stop and that Senator Lundy and her colleagues will ensure that these reprehensible decisions will be wound back, because we do need to maintain functions in enhancing Australia's e-security, we do need to talk about broadbanding our nation and about making Australian government agencies and departments capable of facing the new IT environment. For those reasons, we do need that spending on the Office for the Information Economy and we do need those jobs in Canberra. We also need to have a well-planned, well-maintained and well-promoted national capital, particularly in the parliamentary triangle. Cutting 40 per cent of the budget—40 or 50 jobs—out of the NCA does not achieve those objectives and you should reconsider.

I want also to talk about other services in the ACT which, although they are not going to be cut, unfortunately will not be able to be enhanced because of a decision made in the last week or so by the ACT government. Honourable senators will be aware that the Australian government promoted in the 2001 budget the concept of greatly expanding access to concessions and benefits by Australia's low-income, self-funded retirees, who constitute a growing and very important part of our community. People who have taken the trouble to make preparations for their retirement, who are now living on those arrangements prepared during their working lives and who find that it is difficult to make ends meet for a variety of reasons, deserve our sympathy and our support. The government in its 2001 budget made the very sensible decision to put money on the table to encourage state and territory governments to get out there and put concessions in place for those sorts of self-funded retirees.

Recently the minister announced that that offer was being sweetened. From memory the offer is something in the order of $75 million on the table to get Australian states and territories to come to the party and offer concessions to self-funded retirees. In the case of the ACT, the offer of the federal government is $2.27 million and they have said that the total cost of making those concessions available to self-funded retirees in the ACT is being met 60 per cent by the Commonwealth government and 40 per cent by the ACT government.

That seemed like a very sensible and very fair offer. To my horror, I discovered that the ACT government has refused the Commonwealth offer of assistance. The $2.27 million will be returned to the Commonwealth government because, in the ACT government's view, its contribution of something like $2 million would be better spent on providing services to other sorts of people than Canberra's low-income, self-funded retirees. That is a truly disgraceful attitude.

Self-funded retirees deserve to be taken into account in government policy at both the federal and the state and territory level. They deserve to get a better deal than they have had in the past. They deserve to be able to access something in the order of $965 a year in concessions that this package presented them with. It beggars belief to think that the ACT government would hand back such a generous Commonwealth offer because they think they have higher priorities for their spending. I can assure honourable senators that I will be doing my best in the coming few months to draw to the attention of the ACT community the very mean-spirited approach being taken by the ACT government.

Finally, without pre-empting debate on a matter that will no doubt come to this place in due course, I want to commend the Australian government for its decision to introduce the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Amendment (Promoting Safer Workplaces) Bill 2004 into the House of Representatives this morning. That bill has the intention of removing employers and employees within the Commonwealth's ambit, within Commonwealth employment, from the operation of the recently passed ACT industrial manslaughter legislation. It is a matter of great concern to the business community of the ACT that the ACT has been the first, and hopefully the only, jurisdiction to legislate in this way for industrial manslaughter. They are laws which are quite unnecessary, given that there are already clear occupational health and safety laws that outlaw reckless and inappropriate behaviour by employers which could lead to the injury or death of their employees.

Given the existence of those laws, the imposition of a law outlawing industrial manslaughter and imposing extremely heavy, criminal penalties on employers in this territory is a matter of great concern and, in my opinion, will have the effect of reducing or retarding the growth in employment in the ACT. People will factor that into the equation when they come to consider whether they should be making the ACT a place for them to employ other people. That is a matter of great regret. The Commonwealth has wisely decided to exclude from the operation of this bill employees within the Commonwealth orbit, and that is a very sensible decision. I hope that this parliament will speedily pass the legislation to protect those employers and employees within that definition. That will then leave the ACT community to pass judgment on those industrial manslaughter laws when the ACT goes to the polls in October this year.

These are matters which touch on the ACT. The niggardly approach of the ACT government in respect of concessions for older people is a matter of concern. Also of great concern is the attitude of the opposition in promoting an attitude which says that the ACT may be cut freely because the votes here just do not matter. We should all be concerned about the degradation of the national areas, the parliamentary triangle, inherent in the decision that Labor has announced this week.