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Tara Cheyne had never set foot in Canberra when she was recruited into the federal public service but after almost a decade in the nation's capital, it is firmly and inextricably home. A year ago, the ACT parliamentarian would have faced the same uncertainty as her Department of Finance colleagues do now, after the federal government unveiled plans to explore decentralising the Australian public service. On Wednesday, it was revealed the Coalition government would force all federal departments to justify their continued presence and that of their portfolio agencies in Canberra and other capital cities or else face a forced move to rural or regional Australia. While Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce on Thursday dismissed the idea of sending whole government departments to the bush, Ms Cheyne said the prospect of being forced to pick up and start again was "frightening" for many of her former colleagues. Are you affected by the proposal to move public servant jobs to regional Australia? Email katie.burgess@fairfaxmedia.com.au "I don't know if I could have left. I think I would have started looking for other work, Canberra is my home and my life," Ms Cheyne, who is now a Labor MLA in the ACT Legislative Assembly, said. "This is where I put my roots down and this is where my friends have put their roots down. I have a family here, I've got pets here. I bought a house here and to be treated like a chess piece or a pawn and to move somewhere and have uncertainty hanging over my head would have been absolutely frightening." But Mr Joyce described fears about an exodus of public service jobs from Canberra as "hyperventilation". "It is the reality that if you're a public servant, you're a servant of the public," he said. "I'm a public servant and if the Australian people vote me out, that's it, that's their decision, I can't say 'well I'm hanging around Canberra because I choose to'. "I'm a servant of the public and that service to the public is deliberated and instructed by the parliament and cabinet and you've got to respect it." He said if all government decisions were informed by a cost-benefit analysis, Canberra would not exist. "If we didn't have the vision we have now for places like Armidale, Toowoomba and Albury, if that vision was lacking back in the 1900s, there'd be no Canberra, Canberra would be called Melbourne, because that's where parliament would be," Mr Joyce said. But Ms Cheyne said federal parliamentarians needed to remember they were playing with people's lives. "So many people choose to move here and they choose to stay, and to not ask people, but to say by August this might not be your home anymore through no fault of your own is a pretty frightening prospect," she said. "I've still got lots and lots of friends in the public service who I know love their jobs and love Canberra, the two go hand in hand and the fact that might be all thrown up right into the mix for them in a few months time is a pretty awful prospect to consider and in the meantime they've got three months of worrying and wondering 'will it be me?'."

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