Developments in Manuka, Ainslie, Bruce Stadium and the futsal park have caused disquiet in the community for a variety of reasons, whereas in each case the Government pleads purity of purpose, usually a purpose to bring money and jobs to the town and amenity to its residents. The projects have been individually condemned for lack of consultation and fear that public assets are being squandered or hands over to private hands without the public getting value for money.
Privatisation can be opposed on ideological grounds, but the criticism on financial grounds can be blunted if it is done in the sunshine.
Bruce Stadium is a good example. If it had been sold outright to a private company at open auction, the ACT Government might have escaped much of the criticism that is not purely ideological. As it is, Chief Minister Kate Carnell has come under fire from her own Ministers for not consulting more widely. The Government has also come under fire for announcing that it would contribute $27 million to the upgrade without having budgeted for it, without putting it to the Assembly and without consulting anyone. It seems it was put on the spur of the moment to attract soccer as an Olympic sport. Or if it was not a spur-of-the-moment decision it must have been kept unduly secret from the Assembly, the main players and the public in a way that has prevented them from influencing the carriage of events.
The same could have been said about the decision to permit the futsal stadium. And in that there appears to have been complicity on the part of the National Capital Authority.
Mrs Carnell’s enthusiasm and hard work towards getting more business for the Territory is to be commended, but at times it seems to lack a respect for process.
It may be frustrating and aggravating to have to listen to the view of others or to have the government’s projects watered down or defeated, but that is the nature of a liberal democracy. The ACT is not unique in this. Other polities have similar fetters. Cabinet, the party, the parliament, the bureaucracy, community groups and the public all have a right to inputs of varying strength to decision making between elections.
Mrs Carnell may have some justification in feeling she is best placed to make decisions on her own, given the lack of intellectual and political depth in government ranks in the Assembly, but the course is misguided. She can only get the blame when things go wrong and little thanks when they go right. Moreover, without wider input decisions are bound to be poorer.
The question of the shifting of public assets with respect to these four developments remains unanswered. Bruce was virtually handed to the Raiders at the expense of athletics and is now to be revamped at the expense of Australian Rules without any inquiry into overall public benefit. Public land was used for futsal. Public housing assets in Ainslie are likely to go to developers, though the Ainslie process is not beyond redemption because the Government and ACT Housing say it has not been finalised.. In Manuka, there are inconsistencies in allowing a 4000sq m 24-hour super-market after restricting those elsewhere, and the whole project will be undermined unless Woolworths wins the so-called open and competitive expression-of-interest process so it can vacate its existing site which is causing trucking mayhem in Palmerston Lane to allow better pedestrian facilities.
It may well be all four decisions are the best for the ACT, but if so Canberrans cannot be convinced of it because the Government has not gone through sufficient explanatory process, and until that happens there can be a reasonable suspicion that private interests are being put before public ones.