A plan to shift public sector jobs to Ballarat will be announced “in the coming weeks”, Regional Development Minister Jaala Pulford said.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Such an announcement was in the “not too distant future” last year, when Premier Daniel Andrews addressed a Regional Partnerships forum in Ballarat in November but the government has been tight lipped on the subject since.
“We’ll have some more to say in coming weeks,” Ms Pulford said.
“I don’t want to give you a specific date but suffice to say the government is well advanced in its thinking and planning on these issues and we hope to have an announcement not too far away at all.”
Ms Pulford would not confirm whether an announcement would be made within the month.
Mr Andrews told The Courier last year he “looked forward to ... as an employer, the Victorian government playing its part in what is already a dynamic Ballarat economy.”
The state government has been under pressure to relocate public sector jobs from Melbourne to Ballarat since the Napthine government’s pre-election promise to shift VicRoads from Kew in 2014.
The relocation of VicRoads to Ballarat looks set to be a key plank in the opposition’s pre-election commitment for 2018.
A decentralisation taskforce, chaired by Kew MP Tim Smith, was launched by the opposition last year. At the time Mr Smith reiterated the party’s commitment to move VicRoads to Ballarat.
Mr Smith on Wednesday said he was “not in the slightest” concerned about backlash from his electorate should VicRoads be relocated – a move which was pegged to bring as many as 560 employees to Ballarat.
“Kew, like other parts of inner Melbourne, is very conscious of the fact … that the whole of Victoria needs to take the load with regards to population growth.
“There’s a huge opportunity for regional Victoria, which is a great challenge to Melbourne. Melbourne’s malaise is regional Victoria’s opportunity and we think that government agencies should move to regional Victoria and VicRoads should move to Ballarat.”
The prospect of a government jobs boost for Ballarat follows the relocations of Worksafe to Geelong and an earlier shift of parts of the State Trustees to Bendigo.
Geelong was also the recipient of federal jobs from the ABS and the major move of the TAC in 2009.
Jessica Black
Ballarat journalist.
Ballarat journalist.
