The push to relocate public service jobs to bush towns is here to stay under the Coalition government as it tells departments to consider their regional footprint annually.
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More decentralisation projects will emerge this year as the government flags Canberra and the centres of Sydney and Melbourne as the potential sources of relocated bureaucracy jobs.
Portfolios will review their staffing in country towns yearly and describe it in annual statements for federal budgets, the government has revealed in response to a Coalition-dominated parliamentary committee report calling for decentralisation.
The move signals the Coalition is embedding the project into its budget cycle after its junior Nationals partners in April 2017 first announced the government would ask portfolio ministers to identify bureaucracy jobs to move into the bush.
"A greater Australian Public Service presence in regional Australia brings government closer to the people it serves," the Coalition government said in its written response.
"The benefits go beyond service delivery. Closer proximity to rural and regional communities and stakeholders supports greater understanding of the views, needs and experiences of people living in regional Australia. It reinforces the government's strong connection with communities and the land."
Labor has also embraced parts of the decentralisation project ahead of its election campaign, committing to increasing service-delivery-based bureaucracy jobs in marginal electorates on the NSW south coast and in north Queensland.
Opposition regional services spokesman and former public service union secretary Stephen Jones is among Labor's vocal supporters of decentralisation, but in November criticised Coalition-driven relocations as pork-barrelling. Canberra-based Labor MP Andrew Leigh has backed the "smart decentralisation" of previous Labor governments.
The government has signalled it will follow a parliamentary committee recommendation that every federal agency consider relocating "whenever appropriate", but always when a new agency is created, an organisation is merged or reorganised, or a lease terminates.
It said by elevating its decentralisation agenda with a newly-created, cabinet-level ministry awarded to Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie in August, "relocation of government agencies is consistently being considered at the highest level".
ACT Liberal senator Zed Seselja said after he advocated protections to Canberra from decentralisation, the government required proposed large government agency relocations to assess the impact on the local economy.
"While regional areas could greatly benefit from the presence of a government agency, decentralisation efforts should focus on large cities like Sydney and Melbourne," he said.
Dr Leigh said the government's response to the parliamentary committee failed to weigh the economic cost of agency relocations.
"Having broad conditions that could trigger a relocation - such as the end of a lease - could create a sense of perpetual flux in departments, which may distract from their core business," he said.
"There's a good reason that clever nations centralise their policymaking capacity in the capital: it avoids silo thinking, encourages interdepartmental cooperation, and allows public servants to develop experience across agencies.
"A strong public service, centred in Canberra, is in the interests of all Australians."
Dr Leigh drew a line between the "smart decentralisation agenda" pursued by Labor governments, and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority's forced relocation from Canberra to former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce's electorate.
"The APVMA move was opposed by the experts, didn't pass the cost-benefit test, and according to recent reports had led to almost $1.5 million in staff payouts," Dr Leigh said.
Despite the government's decentralisation promises, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane's CBDs have amassed the greatest share of Australia's new public service jobs and grown their proportion of the nation's federal public service employment under the Coalition government.
