Plans for forced public service relocations haven't slowed amid Parliament's citizenship crisis, despite warnings from the ACT government of $110 million in damage to Canberra's economy for every 1000 jobs lost.
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The Turnbull government is currently considering submissions from portfolio areas facing decentralisation moves away from Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, despite the plan's architects Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash being removed from Parliament by the High Court.
Acting Regional Development Minister Darren Chester described the moves as a key Coalition policy supported by cabinet, while the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development is leading implementation efforts.
In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry considering the Nationals-led decentralisation push, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr warned regional NSW and the ACT would suffer and federal government agencies would work less effectively if forced to relocate.
"The federal government's decentralisation policy is another instance of Commonwealth employment decisions made without regard for the consequences for the ACT economy or indeed for the workers and businesses in the Canberra region that significantly rely on the economic activity underpinned by public sector employment in the nation's capital," Mr Barr said.
"Beyond this, even if the impact of foolhardy decentralisation were not so deleterious to the Canberra region, there is scant evidence to support indiscriminate relocation as effective, sustainable regional economic development policy.
"In fact, for both the agencies forced to relocate and the communities into which they transplanted – and therefore for Australia as a whole – the impact is often a net negative."
The territory estimates ACT gross state product would reduce by $110 million each year for every 1000 public service jobs lost.
Public administration and defence and security represented about 31 per cent of gross state product in the 2015-16 financial year, and as the largest of any sector in the ACT was worth approximately $11.225 billion.
Mr Barr said 57,549 public servants were based in Canberra last year, making up about 38 per cent of the total federal workforce of 152,007 across Australia.
"Canberra itself is the single greatest example of a successful decentralisation model, unparalleled anywhere in the world," he said.
"The Commonwealth has a major responsibility to ensure the functionality of the ACT and to work closely with the ACT government to ensure the principles which underpin it remain intact."
He called the relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Mr Joyce's former electorate of New England a "highly disruptive and problem-beset exercise in public governance".
Labor's agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon accused Mr Joyce of "a hoax" in moving the agency to Armidale.
"The reality is that Barnaby Joyce hasn't been able to make this work and won't be able to make it work, in fact he has already got new strategies in place," he told ABC radio.
"He is now going to de-regulate the work of this very important agency. He is going to be farming the work out to the private sector certified regulator if you like, because he can't make this work.
"That is a backward step for our farming sector and it delivers no benefit to Armidale."
