In a coup for the ACT business community, seven secretaries of federal government departments have agreed to a private meeting today to hear first-hand how government cuts are hurting Canberra.
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The powerful bureaucrats will face the Canberra Business Council and senior mandarins from the ACT government.
Council CEO Chris Faulks believes the message is not getting across that cuts to jobs such as through the ''efficiency dividend'' are having a disproportionate impact on Canberra.
''This is not a meeting asking for handouts,'' she told The Canberra Times.
''We're just simply trying to deepen the understanding of the synergy and the co-relatedness of business and the economy in Canberra, and the federal government.
''We respect the fact that governments need to make decisions about adjusting their workforce and returning the budget to surplus, we don't have a problem with that.
''What we would like along the way is recognition or acknowledgment that those decisions have a disproportionate impact in Canberra.
''We know that by far the majority of business in the ACT is either directly or indirectly reliant on federal government decisions around employment and procurement.''
Ms Faulks likened the situation in Canberra to Ford needing to understand the impact of its decisions on Geelong.
''Where we are coming from is having a deeper understanding of the inter-relatedness between the decisions made at the Commonwealth level and the impact on business in the ACT,'' she said.
''Obviously all of retail and other service industries rely on the fact that 50 per cent of the employment here is in the federal public service.'' Ms Faulks said there was no doubt that cuts to the federal public service''go down very well'' in the rest of Australia.
''We know that absolutely,'' she said.
''It is obviously good for politicians in their electorates if they say they are going to cut back.
''We don't deny the right of the government to make those decisions but they need to understand the disproportionate implications for the community here.
''The secretaries of the departments are not necessarily making these decisions, it's more the executive government.
''So the meeting is to have an informal conversation about the economy in the ACT, how reliant it is on the federal government and beyond that, to ask the federal bureaucracy what it is they are looking for in terms of workforce and skilled labor, to be able to assist them to deliver the programs.
''With the skills shortage, what can the business community do to assist the federal bureaucracy deliver the programs they need to.''
