"Canberra is not an abstraction to me. It is the suburbs where families build lives, the sporting fields where our children grow up, the clubs that hold communities together, and small businesses whose owners put their homes and savings on the line. ...

... I am proposing the Capital Region Compact. One region. One economy. One future. The Compact would be an agreement between three governments: the Commonwealth, the ACT and NSW, together with the councils of the region. ... The principle is simple. Where common rules reduce costs without lowering standards, harmonise them. Where shared infrastructure unlocks housing and investment, plan it together. Where different settings serve a genuine local purpose, keep them. The objective is productivity, not uniformity. ...

Let us establish the Capital Region Economic Commission by the end of 2026. Let us build Australia's first Capital Region Economic Zone. Let us prove that governments can cooperate across borders, that regional communities can share growth, and that Canberra can once again be one of Australia's great nation-building stories."

Keynote speech to the ClubsACT Micro-Conference,

Hellenic Club Woden, Thursday 27 August 2026

Thank you to ClubsACT for bringing together business leaders, economists, community organisations, local government representatives and policymakers in one room. That mix is the point of today, and it is the point of what I want to put to you.

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, recognise any other people or families with connection to the lands of the ACT and surrounding region, and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

Before I speak as the Federal Member for Bean, let me speak as a Canberran. My parents came to Canberra before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. I was born here, went to school at Marist, studied at the ANU and earned my first pay packets at Big W in Woden. My wife Liesl and I have raised Marcus, Eamonn and Stella here.

Canberra is not an abstraction to me. It is the suburbs where families build their lives, the sporting fields where our children grow up, the clubs that hold communities together, and the small businesses whose owners put their homes and savings on the line.

In 1911, when the design competition for the national capital was announced, this Territory was home to 1,714 people, 1,763 horses, 8,412 cattle and 224,764 sheep. Today we are closing in on half a million people. The independent review of the National Capital Authority in 2011 projected Canberra would reach 500,000 by 2050. We will get there more than twenty years early. Hold onto that fact, because everything I want to say today flows from it. This city keeps outgrowing the plans made for it.

Last week I wrote that as we approach forty years of self-government, the Self-Government Act, in effect our constitution, should be reviewed, with no predetermined answers and everything on the table. The ACT Government's response was that self-government has served Canberra well. I agree. It was how my article began.

But 'it has served us well' is where the question begins, not where it ends. A city that has doubled in size deserves to have its institutions examined on their merits, not defended by reflex. So let me be clear: I am not walking away from that call. Asking these questions on behalf of my constituents is not a distraction from the job. It is the job.

And I am in good company.

Jon Stanhope told the Assembly he had advocated for a full inquiry into the Self-Government Act.

Katy Gallagher's 2012 submission to an Assembly review saw potential for better harmonising Territory and Commonwealth planning, and a strong case for reviewing the size of the Assembly.

Allan Hawke's 2011 review recommended the Act be reviewed and updated for the Centenary of Canberra.

Some of it happened.

The Commonwealth's veto over Territory laws was abolished.

The Assembly won the right to set its own size.

But the comprehensive review never came.

This is unfinished business, and over the years it has been championed by ACT Labor leaders more often than it has been opposed.

But governance is only half the settlement struck in 1988. Today I want to talk about the other half: the economic model we inherited, and whether it can carry the city and the region we are becoming.

Let me start with what is going right, because a lot is. Canberra is one of Australia's most successful cities, with great national institutions, a highly educated workforce and a quality of life other cities envy.

But the ACT is a creation of the Commonwealth, and it exists primarily for the Commonwealth's benefit. That fact shapes our economy more than any budget ever will. It gave us an economy built around public administration. And it left the Territory with constraints no state capital faces.

The ACT cannot levy payroll tax on Commonwealth salaries. It cannot levy land tax on Commonwealth-owned land. National-capital planning decisions limit the Territory's developable and taxable base. These are structural facts, not complaints, and they distinguish Canberra from every other capital in the country.

None of this is news to the Commonwealth. It made payments to the ACT for what the Grants Commission called our rating disability, the inability to raise revenue from Commonwealth property, and for the extra costs the capital's design imposes. In 2008 those payments were folded into a single municipal services payment, and the principle behind them faded from view.

That principle was right then and it is right now. The nation asked Canberra to be its capital. The nation should help carry the cost of what that asks of us.

Consider what that looks like today. Across our region, Public Administration and Safety accounts for more than one worker in four, around 101,000 people. Nationally, the figure is 6.6 per cent. Few Australian cities are as dependent on a single industry as Canberra is on public administration.

Diversification is not a criticism of our public service. It is how we protect it. A strong private economy broadens the revenue base that pays for schools, hospitals and transport. It creates career paths for our children. It gives Canberra resilience when Commonwealth priorities change.

The pressures on our inherited model are visible in the numbers, and I want to be careful about what the numbers do and do not say. The ACT Budget forecasts a headline deficit of $323 million in 2026-27, with net debt reaching $14.1 billion by the end of the decade and an interest bill above a billion dollars a year. That is roughly three million dollars a day. The Government has set a path back to surplus in 2028-29, and every Canberran should want that target met.

Saul Eslake's report to the Assembly's fiscal sustainability inquiry warned the Territory could become increasingly vulnerable if recent trends continue. He did not say the ACT is in crisis, and neither do I. People will debate the choices made along the way, and that debate belongs in the Assembly. My point is a different one. A jurisdiction with a revenue base this narrow and an employment base this concentrated has fewer shock absorbers than any state, whoever is in office. Every dollar spent servicing debt is a dollar not spent on a nurse, a teacher, a road or a home. The task is to grow the base, and that is a task no territory government can complete alone.

So the answer begins by changing the scale at which we think.

Even in 2011, the Hawke review counted around 20,000 people crossing into the ACT each day for work, five times the flow going the other way.

Every day this city provides health, education and justice services to our New South Wales neighbours. The ACT had nearly half-a-million residents at the end of last year, but the CRJO itself describes Canberra as the hub of a region of more than three quarters of a million people. Workers do not stop at the border. Housing markets do not stop at the border. Students, patients, visitors, freight and investment do not stop at the border. Only governments stop at the border.

It is not only workers who cross the border. Canberra's hospitals and specialist services already care for a regional population well beyond the Territory's boundaries, while aged care and primary care sit with the Commonwealth. Patients experience one health system; governments too often plan as though there are three. The Compact should plan health services, workforce and infrastructure for the population we actually serve, not the borders we inherited. One region, one labour market, one health system, one housing market, one economic future.

And this is not a blank page.

The ACT and New South Wales governments have a Memorandum of Understanding for Regional Collaboration, first signed in 2011 and renewed by Premier Minns and Chief Minister Barr in 2024. NSW has a Cross-Border Commissioner. The councils of this region, Queanbeyan-Palerang, Yass Valley, Snowy Monaro, Goulburn Mulwaree, Upper Lachlan and their neighbours, work together through the Canberra Region Joint Organisation, with the ACT at the table as an associate member. Cooperation machinery has existed here in one form or another since the Regional Leaders' Forum began in 1995. Thirty years of goodwill and signatures. What none of it has ever had are the two things that turn cooperation into results: the Commonwealth as a standing partner, and published targets that governments can be judged against.

We already function as a single region. A family might live in Bungendore, work in Barton, study in Belconnen and see a specialist in Garran. Our challenge is not to create a regional economy. It exists. Our challenge is to govern and plan for it accordingly.

So today I am proposing the Capital Region Compact.

One region. One economy. One future.

The Compact would be an agreement between three governments: the Commonwealth, the ACT and New South Wales, together with the councils of the region.

Its engine would be a Capital Region Economic Commission, independently chaired, jointly established, and built on the CRJO's work rather than over it. And its destination would be Australia's first Capital Region Economic Zone.

Not constitutional change, not amalgamation, not another tier of government, but deliberate integration wherever integration delivers a measurable benefit.

That MoU has been renewed every four years or so, each time as a statement of goodwill. When it next comes up for renewal, we should not sign another memorandum. We should sign the Compact.

The principle is simple. Where common rules reduce costs without lowering standards, harmonise them. Where shared infrastructure unlocks housing and investment, plan it together. Where different settings serve a genuine local purpose, keep them. The objective is productivity, not uniformity.

Within its first hundred days, the Commission should publish a baseline audit of duplicated regulation, approval delays, cross-border infrastructure gaps and barriers to private investment. Around its table should sit the three governments, the councils, business, universities, unions, economists, First Nations representatives and the community. And each year it should report publicly against clear measures: approval times reduced, licences mutually recognised, private capital attracted, housing enabled, commercial investment accelerated, health services coordinated, infrastructure jointly sequenced, compliance costs removed.

What would that mean in practice? A qualified tradesperson should not have to prove the same competence twice to work in one labour market. A business operating on both sides of the border should provide common information once, to one regional concierge. Priority residential, commercial and industrial projects should be assessed against agreed regional principles and matched with the roads, transport, utilities, schools and health services to support them, planned as one functional economy rather than through disconnected decisions that push costs and congestion across the border. The region should put one investment proposition to the world, not competing pitches from neighbouring agencies. And it means joint strategies for freight, tourism, skills, cyber, defence industries, renewable energy and advanced manufacturing, with responsibility given to whichever institution is best placed to deliver.

Clubs know this story better than most. The recent Independent Inquiry into the ACT club industry found that differences between ACT and NSW settings can intensify cross-border displacement, and it expressly recommended exploring regulatory harmonisation with New South Wales. Done properly, harmonisation means better-aligned harm-minimisation and self-exclusion systems first and foremost, alongside compatible technology and data standards, sensibly sequenced reform, and planning rules that allow clubs to diversify responsibly. This industry has argued for that alignment with a united voice, and the Inquiry has now put it on the public record.

I said last week that Canberrans should be able to identify who is responsible for the decisions that shape their lives, and judge the results. The same test applies here. The Compact is not another layer of bureaucracy sitting between you and an answer. It is a public undertaking, with named responsibilities and published results, judged annually in the open.

So here is the choice. We can keep managing a model built around public administration, land and population growth while debt and interest narrow our choices. Or we can use the strengths we still have, our people, our institutions, our universities, our councils, our clubs and our national role, to build a broader economy while we are strong enough to do it on our own terms.

A century ago, Australians built a capital out of a sheep paddock. Our generation's task is to build the economic resilience that carries it through its second century. The ACT border should remain an administrative boundary. It should never be an economic barrier.

Let us establish the Capital Region Economic Commission by the end of this year. Let us build Australia's first Capital Region Economic Zone. And let us prove that governments can cooperate across borders, that regional communities can share growth, and that Canberra can once again be one of Australia's great nation-building stories.

Thank you.

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