14 July 2011

The Pleasure Dome will educate the children!

| johnboy
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The increasingly shrill efforts of the ACT Government to convince the public of the wisdom of building a grand new centralised mega structure to house itself (less the Gungahlin penal battalion) in Civic have reached a new crescendo with Andrew Barr announcing the construction will educate the young and indigenous!

The proposed ACT Government office block will help around 200 young Canberrans complete their skills training on a unique environmentally friendly project, with a minimum of 10 percent of workers on the project to be apprentices, trainees and young indigenous people.

The Master Builders Association of the ACT calculates that major projects in the ACT generate up to 7 jobs for every $1 million invested. The estimated investment of $281 million in the building will support about 2,000 jobs over the life of the project, 10 per cent of which will be filled by apprentices and indigenous Canberrans.

The ACT Government office block is an investment in sustainability. Because the building will feature the very latest in low energy emission design and technology, the project will provide a rare opportunity for Canberrans to learn the skills they will need to build the sustainable buildings that will be increasingly needed in the lower carbon economy of the future.

How will our heart strings bear such tugging! But wait, here’s a line of thinking which might explain a great deal of policy:

the building industry is the bedrock of any economy.

There I was thinking it was a food surplus.

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Mr Lubberlubber6:01 pm 14 Jul 11

Canberra has a great proportion of the greenest buildings being built or completed due to the Feds mandating the need for it. One more building, regardless of the size, really isn’t going to add much more to the local skills as the skills already exist.

It’s not the bedrock of many economies.

Wouldn’t one say it’s usually an output or trait of a strong economy?

Grumpy Old Fart4:31 pm 14 Jul 11

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again putting all your eggs in one basket is highly dangerous. I wonder if they have done a risk assessment and understand the impact of having the building shutdown due to circumstances beyond their control. If all the eggs are locked out of the building how do they function?

Real jobs in the real world would probably do that also. Hey, but what half a billion?

How nice. Do they do they have the minimum 10% thing for every government building project? Maybe they should. And surely they could spread those trainee places out amongst various enviro building projects in Canberra regardless of whether this office building happens or not.

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