19 October 2007

Stanhope backflips on Gungahlin PS jobs

| BeyondThought
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Wannabe for Fraser, Troy Williams, has been all over the media today saying he wants public sector jobs in Gungahlin on the same day the CT reports that ACT PS jobs are to go in Civic.

It looks as if Stanhope has renegged on a promise to place them in Gungahlin made at a recent Gungahlin Community Council meeting. Current MP McMuppet claims to have been a long-standing advocate for PS jobs in Gungahlin but aparently forgot to talk to Stanhope.

Are PS (either ACT or APS) viable up north?

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i know it’s really picky, but the title of this thread has stanhope doing a ‘backflip’ – now if the metaphorical intent is to impart the sense that he has reversed his opinion/policy/etc [which i gather it is], then shall i point out that a real ‘backflip’ leaves the flipper facing the same way!

please, a ‘u-turn’ or ‘reversal’ is much better and means i don’t have to waste my time reiterating what i already tell abc/australian/age/smh/canberra times editors; with seemingly no success! ; )

No services at the airport either, but that didn’t stop them!

And HQ JOC isn’t at Bungendore. It’s quite a way west of Bungendore. Closer to Hoskinstown than Bungendore. And I wish they’d turn their bloody lights off.

Dunlop: I sometimes take the hounds around there to piss on the street urchins. It sure has that Charnwood feeling.

Vic Bitterman9:35 pm 19 Oct 07

Dunlop = 100% housing commission.

Consider it Charnwood MK II.

No chance of dept’s relocating to Dunlop. The level of services (shops, schools, buses) indicates the Govt has forgotten it exists.

el ......VNBerlinaV87:49 pm 19 Oct 07

Would there be the same amount of support if these new ACT Govt departments were planning to locate themselves in Dunlop/Holt?

FFS! The ACT Light Rail Cpalition is writing the Liberal policy once again I see.

Why Gungahlin Troy? Do the workers in Belconnen, Airport CBD, Woden and Tuggeranong not have the same lobbying power as the light rail centric Gungahlin Community Council?

Of the thousand jobs that cpuld be created in Gungahlin how many would live outside of Gungahlin and travel via Civic? 200? That is not even a tram full. And it would cost you $200 million if you built it well as a stand alone proff of concept line.

Let me see, Woden will expand by another 3,000 to 4,000 workers by 2013-14. Another 2,000 workers for Tuggeranong on top of the 2,000 starting in the next few weeks and several thousand more at the airport.

By all means build light rail, but build it to where people want to go and quickly. If not up the Majura Valley (instead of the Majura Parkway) why not build it to the Molonglo Valley as a start-up for the 70,000 who will be living there? Make it a model satellite town centre..

if all of the aps and/or all of the act-ps was in civic (or otherwise centraly located) the traffic and parking issues would be pretty horrific.

woden is about 11km from civic and gungahlin about 12 (www.whereis.com) so the geographic argument in favor of woden is a bit pointless, unless you live near woden. lets face it, in canberra we dont **really** have to drive **that** far to get to work.

getting off the subject, williams makes an interesting point about light-rail. would a thousand or so workers over in gungahlin really advance the cause?

The ACT PS has difficulty retaining staff with all teh Fed PS jobs going at the moment.

I would have thought if they put a big office in Gungahlin they would get Gungahlinites working there forever.

I don’t look for work that is more than one bus ride/short drive from my house.

Depending on where you live.

I live in Canberra’s extreme south, so even the city is a bit of a pain for me – though my office is in Fyshwick which makes most of Canberra relatively easy to get to.

Government departments, as Gungahlin Al pointed out, don’t really need to be physically located in proximity to one another for any reason other than to please the staff. The marvels of modern day communication means you can throw them anywhere – like out at Bungendore, and it isn’t an issue for anything other than the travel time.

Tuggeranong and Woden are also stupid places to locate government departments (Woden less so as it is more central, but tuggers is the blooody end of the earth).

Why is it any different from PS departments being located in Tuggeranong or Woden?

This is ridiculous, decentralisation is one of the reasons why infrastructure in Canberra is so dysfunctional.

If everything was centrally located in one place (ie Civic) things would work a lot better public transport wise.

If you choose to live out in Gungahlin you should cop the commute into the City, not the other way around. If my work relocated to Gungahlin I certainly would resign.

Gungahlin Al4:50 pm 19 Oct 07

Commenting now only on the ACT Government aspect of this story – already have Cameron. Interview on Win news tonight.

Thanks for your interest folks. The CM did say (and we have the video to prove it – thankfully) that they would be looking at how to get ACT Government agencies out our way, so today’s news was a “surprise” you could say…

Caf: why? We have this new fangled thing these days called the internet. And Ministers don’t frequent department offices.

It does seem like a sensible efficiency measure to co-locate most of the ACT PS in one place, next door to their political masters.

Please won’t somebody think of the consultants.

Its already bad enough that they have to travel from the inner south to the far reaches of Belconnen or Tuggeranong, having to travel all the way to Gungahlin would be more than their BMW’s could handle. God knows what’s going to happen when Defence start up out at Bungendore.

Gungahlin Al needs to weigh in on this one.

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