Page 1873 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 June 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
In the children’s storybook A Fish out of Water, the boy does not listen to Mr Carp at the pet shop and feeds his fish, Otto, too much. Poor Otto; he grows and grows, and the frantic boy runs out of places to put him. But the boy did not listen. After the failed ChooseCBR trial, the Canberra Liberals urged the government to conduct an independent review before the expanded version was implemented. In February, I said that I was loath to call for a review, as Canberrans are rightly cynical about reviews, but the government had $2 million for ChooseCBR in the budget and I did not want to see that money wasted. Just like our boy in A Fish out of Water who did not heed Mr Carp’s advice, the business minister did not listen to the Canberra Liberals, saying that an independent review was unnecessary. “We do not need an expensive consultant to conduct a review.” That was how the minister put it, even though no-one was suggesting that.
This morning, the minister told us several times that ChooseCBR was a business stimulus program. It is important to ask how the government defines “stimulus” and equally important to crunch the numbers to understand the size of that stimulus for Canberra’s small businesses, and whether their participation in the problem-plagued scheme was worth it.
Not only that, there was a massive spend of Canberra’s money, not just the $2 million in vouchers but the huge marketing, administration and IT costs, plus the costs of buying the program in the first place. Was it worth it? Did it represent value for money? That is the number one question that small business must always ask itself.
A close look at the figures on page 21 are revealing. We know the following facts. While the minister has repeatedly told us that more than 800 businesses registered for the scheme, we know that less than 800—the number is actually 797—benefited from the ChooseCBR customers coming through the door. So of the 4,000 Canberra businesses eligible for the ChooseCBR scheme, less than 800 made any money. To put it another way, less than one in five of the eligible Canberra businesses participated in the scheme and turned a dollar; less than 800 Canberra businesses made a buck.
What else have we learned from the minister’s statement this morning? We know that, of the 797 businesses which made a dollar, most of them—619—redeemed over 10 vouchers. In fact, 419 businesses redeemed more than 50 vouchers, including some which redeemed more than 100. And there were 19 businesses which redeemed over 500.
If we look at those 419 businesses and estimate that each redeemed around 75 vouchers, pocketing approximately $30, we see that those 419 businesses could have made $2,250 from ChooseCBR. But if we turn to the 200 businesses which redeemed more than 10, yet less than 50 vouchers, and we estimate that they redeemed 25 vouchers with a value of $30, that would mean that those 200 businesses made only $750 from the scheme.
Finally, we know that there were 178 businesses that redeemed less than 10 vouchers. Let us say that each of those redeemed maybe five, worth $30 each. That would give
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video