Page 3020 - Week 09 - Thursday, 13 October 2022

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delivery of a new Access Canberra website to provide government information and services according to customer needs. The delivery of these reforms will significantly enhance the business experience when interacting with government.

She wilfully ignored—and I can say this with confidence—the work of the Better Regulation Taskforce, because I know that she knows that it is funded over three years. It is delivering a proactive business support team through a concierge model; mapping the end-to-end business user experience for selected business types; developing options to better measure regulatory burden; reviewing the local industry participation policy; and developing options to improve existing regulatory arrangements, from short-term rental accommodation to employment agents licensing. We have already announced the changes to the training courses for interstate responsible service of alcohol certificate holders.

Then there is what else is in the budget for Access Canberra. Our one-stop shop, Access Canberra is interacting with a Canberran every five seconds and making a regulatory decision every 15 seconds. I am proud that in this budget our government is providing additional funding to strengthen Access Canberra’s ability to provide responsive activities and services that positively impact the lives and wellbeing of Canberrans.

As a regulator, Access Canberra employs an “educate, engage, enforce” approach. The resources made available in this year’s budget will provide additional opportunities to engage across business sectors to maintain the integrity and viability of industries that make the ACT a safe and attractive place to live, work, visit, study and invest. Access Canberra continues to implement important government initiatives that benefit our community. We are committed to reducing the social and health impacts from electronic gaming machines, enhancing road safety and increasing worker mobility, as I flagged before.

Our construction industry has continued to recover well from the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns, but I do acknowledge the very concerning incident from earlier this week. It was lucky—and it should not be relying on luck—that no one was injured with the shoring wall collapse.

We are dedicated to ensuring that Canberra’s homes are structurally safe, and that homeowners are protected from that poor building quality. I am pleased that this budget, again, provides additional resources for Access Canberra to have the capacity and technical expertise to respond quickly and proportionately. There are five extra staff, including inspectors and investigators, being funded through this budget, and there is extra funding to enhance our inspection and investigation systems that proactively identify and address building quality issues at all stages of construction.

We are a place of natural beauty that connects and sustains our community, and we are investing in the delivery of a modern environment protection system in the ACT. Two additional environment protection officers have been funded in this budget to provide additional proactive and reactive environmental compliance monitoring.

As part of this year’s budget, we have also increased the number of positions in customer facing and processing areas by 16. This includes five concierge positions at


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