Corbell is new A/G

Something about deckchairs on the Titanic?

Well strike me with an underwater SIEV-X memorial.

It’s not up on the media release website, but here’s a cut-and-paste:

NEW MINISTRIES STREAMLINE AND FOCUS RESOURCES

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope announced the shape of his new-look Cabinet today, allocating portfolios and putting in place the new Administrative Arrangements that will support their work.

Mr Stanhope said that he had personally taken on the role of Treasurer, reflecting the priority the Government placed on restoring the Territory’s Budget to surplus.

“I can send no higher signal of my determination to put the ACT on a sound and secure financial footing for the future than to combine the roles of Chief Minister and Treasurer, ensuring that fiscal considerations are at the heart of our decision-making as a Government,” Mr Stanhope said today. “The message, to business, to the community, and to the country, is that financial responsibility and probity will inform the way forward, at the highest levels of government.”

Mr Stanhope said he would also become Minister for Economic Development and would retain the portfolios of Arts and Indigenous Affairs, as well as keeping responsibility for Water and Energy Policy. Significant structural changes include the absorption of Business ACT into the Chief Minister’s Department and the inclusion of Gaming and Racing in Treasury.

The Deputy Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher, would take responsibility for Health, Disability and Community Services and Women, served by a new departmental structure that would see the retention of the Departments of Health, and Disability and Community Services (which includes Children, Youth and Family Support).

Simon Corbell would become Attorney General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services (including Corrections), consolidating under one departmental structure a number of related areas of government service delivery, for administrative convenience and efficiency. Mr Corbell would also be Minister for Planning.

John Hargreaves would become the Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Housing. A new-look departmental structure would draw together traditional Urban-Services functions with Environment and Sustainability, Heritage, Housing and Transport. Mr Hargreaves would also be Minister for Multicultural Affairs.

Andrew Barr would become the new Minister for Education and Training, as well as taking on responsibility for Tourism and Sport and Recreation. Mr Barr would also become Minister for Industrial Relations.

Mr Stanhope said the new departmental structures reflected many of the ideas raised in the Functional and Strategic Review, while taking into account the working realities of a small, five-member Cabinet. The new arrangements would deliver considerable efficiencies and create clearer lines of responsibility and accountability between departmental officers and Ministers.

Among the most significant structural changes has been a decision to locate all ‘Shared Services’ — administrative and support functions such as Human Resources, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Publishing, Finance, Procurement and Records Management — within Treasury.

Mr Stanhope said he believed that the administrative changes being ushered in would deliver better and more efficient government to all Territorians. It would reduce complexity and duplication and create clearer areas of authority and accountability for individual Ministers, minimising, to the extent possible in a small ministry, the occasions upon which departments were answerable to more than one Minister.

The new arrangements would allow the Government to concentrate its resources on priority areas, so that the quality of service delivery so important to Canberrans could be maintained, even as more efficient and sustainable models of delivering those services were introduced.

“I think all Canberrans know by now that since self-government we have been living beyond our means, relying too heavily for revenue on land sales – a shrinking and finite source of money, and one that we cannot continue to depend upon, as we move towards new accounting models,” Mr Stanhope said.

“Market forces will certainly shift again, and there will again be times in the future when land sales will deliver windfalls to this or future governments. But we cannot live in expectation of those times. We cannot bank on them. That is why I am putting in place, starting today and continuing with the announcements I will make at the forthcoming Budget, reforms that will position the ACT to move confidently and securely into the future, knowing that we need not rely so heavily as we have done in the past on land sales.

“The administrative arrangements announced today will deliver significant efficiencies of scope and scale, maximise accountability and ensure greater rigour and strategic thinking. The Ministerial team I have put in place has the skills, the gumption and the determination to make all these things happen, on behalf of all Canberrans.”

I’d say they’ll come out tomorrow. I just got an email.

We, the gay east timorese whales, are grateful to be finally acknowledged/recognised Heavs.

anyone seen any media releases on this yet? or will they pop up tomorrow