Page 95 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 8 February 2022
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(iii) the annual licence fee waiver for liquor licences (effectively a 50 percent fee reduction) from 31 March to 30 June for nightclub, restaurant and café, bar, general, catering special and club liquor licences; and
(iv) $500 000 for a second round of Amp It Up! later in 2022; and
(3) calls on the ACT Government to:
(a) continue to assess and monitor the level of support being provided to businesses impacted by ongoing restrictions; and
(b) continue to encourage Canberrans to support local small businesses.
A healthy economy is predicated on a healthy community. The ACT government has always recognised this and continues to underpin our strong economic recovery with the quality of our public health response. We had a difficult period during lockdown—there is no denying that—and I especially acknowledge the impact on our hardworking small businesses. This is exactly why we provided significant direct financial support to over 12,000 businesses—the single largest initiative in the most recent budget. This support was designed and developed in consultation with the business community, to get us through while we kept our community as safe as possible from the deadly variant, and while we undertook a concerted, efficient and successful vaccination campaign.
We expected a V-shaped recovery as we emerged from the lockdown and, despite what Ms Castley would have you believe, we did observe this. Community confidence was high, thanks to the management of the pandemic and our nation-leading vaccination rates, and there was pent-up consumer demand. Ms Castley seems to forget that there was no Omicron variant when we emerged from lockdown. We saw that confidence and that pent-up demand translate to spending. The opposition consistently ignores facts that do not fit their narrative, but we owe it to this place to paint an accurate picture of what has happened.
ABS retail trade turnover in the ACT increased by 19.2 per cent in the month of November 2021 to $616 million in that month alone. This was the highest monthly outcome ever recorded, and higher than its three-year average of $542 million. This record spend was sustained through December, with $596.6 million spent at ACT businesses during the month. ABS retail sales data for the December quarter shows that the ACT had a 12.4 per cent rise, led by spending in discretionary industries, and well ahead of the national average—discretionary industries like our local cafes and our local restaurants. The only industry to see a fall in retail sales was food retailing—our supermarkets.
Unemployment did not skyrocket in December, nor was it at a record high, as Ms Castley somehow claimed in a media release today, which, regrettably, some media outlets published without proper scrutiny. Ms Castley’s erroneous framing of the data is reckless and unbecoming of a shadow minister. The ACT has consistently had one of the strongest-performing labour markets of any jurisdiction during the pandemic. A month does not make a trend, and the ACT generally experiences greater variability in the rate, due to a smaller sample size than other jurisdictions. What is
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