Page 410 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 June 1989
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community about interest rates are taken into effect. After all, the Federal Treasurer of this country plunged the middle class in particular of this country into economic difficulty by deliberately ensuring that the flow of imports would be halted, according to his theory, by a restriction on the funds available and consequently by increasing interest rates.
At the moment, interest rates to come on shore for a lender are 18 to 19 per cent in this Territory. The bank having brought the funds in at 18 or 19 per cent needs to make a margin, and the essential issue is whether that margin is three or four points. The fact is that business is attempting to survive at the moment on interest rates at one-fifth. It is unprecedented and has not happened since the 1930s. Interest rates for unsecured overdraft funds for Canberra business retailers and the like are approaching 23.5 per cent today. That is an extraordinary situation. It is a situation that the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister must address very quickly in terms of the retail trading situation and the private sector problems in the ACT.
The Chief Minister has indicated that there are many good reasons why the private sector should be expanded in the ACT. It will contract and shopping centres will be emptied. There will be clear plate glass in every shopping centre in this Territory soon, unless the Chief Minister develops, with her Deputy Chief Minister, a proper policy of protection, some form of moratorium for retailers who are in difficulty merely over the supply of funds and high rents which have been forced on them to some extent by high interest rates paid by landlords who have borrowed to the margin.
Mr Speaker, the Supply Bill itself, in its first allocation, program community and health services, requires the Chief Minister to pay close attention to the calls during the election campaign by community groups for triennial funding at least. The Chief Minister is well aware that many hard-working community organisations are looking towards a responsive result from the framing of the Appropriation Bills.
Similarly, the allocation to health requires the Chief Minister to go ahead now with an expansion of community health centres, on the Rally's hypothesis, and for health to move into the suburbs at community base level - and that is not to avoid the very important issue surrounding the debate about the one principal hospital - but there must be an appropriation in due course under that supply heading that will attend to the promises during the election campaign.
Similarly, there needs to be a very careful assessment of the administrative structure pertaining to the Schools Authority itself. There needs to be, on the Rally's analysis, a very close examination and a forward plan prepared for the Schools Authority structure in the ACT.
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