Canberra is the nation's capital - a showcase city. But flagging maintenance is taking a toll and needs a fundamental rethink.

As previously described, the ACT Government is running a Facebook page to gauge public thoughts on their upcoming budget. On it, Treasurer Andrew Barr has asked: "Should the Government maintain its current suite of services?"

The problem with this question is that it implies a reduction in services, much as was put by Gary Byers (TaMS boss) to a community forum some months back - "should we reduce public toilet cleaning by 25%?" etc.

The question should be framed more around what can be done to reduce the actual need for the service frequency in the first place.

Can facilities be upgraded to make them easier to maintain? If you treat the budget as an accrual accounting function rather than cash accounting, you can easily come to the conclusion that it is often better to spend some money up front on capital works - even if you have to borrow to do it - in order to reduce ongoing expenditure.

The problem comes when bureaucrats focus on capex but ignore expenditure. Compounded by elected reps who are scared of borrowing.


Of concern is that the level of maintenance is continually dropping off, and this ends up costing more to restore than it would have cost to maintain in the first place. For instance, not keeping mature trees alive during the drought has resulted in a massive impost to replace those that died. Or the gaps are left everywhere, contributing to the growing tattiness of Canberra.

The lack of maintenance is obvious everywhere. The relatively new works around the Belconnen foreshore are already looking shabby, with weedy empty 'garden beds'. Footpaths all over are continually broken up by inappropriate trees, instead of fixing the problem by installing root barriers. Playground equipment lies unrepaired for years such as at Yerrabi Pond. Playground softfall is not maintained leaving dangerous drops and risk of injury and legal claims. Roundabouts through Gungahlin and elsewhere are overgrown with weeds.

I think there is a lot can be learnt for the budget by looking around us and asking why things are like they are, and what can be done to fix them, then will that actually result in reduced expenses.

There also needs to be recognition from the Federal Government that maintaining the nation's capital requires a higher level of care than the very small ACT revenue stream can cope with. The GST contribution for the ACT needs to be locked in at a higher level than other Australian states.