Page 3575 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 September 1990
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border. We should exhibit some concern for what happens to the 300,000 other people who live close by in surrounding shires. That campaign has been well received. I noted that most of the surrounding shires and councils were represented when I launched that, and local business supported it. Micro-economic reform is a major feature of our strategy and this directly impacts on the ACT business environment. We are talking about deregulation; we are talking about reform of the public administration; and we are talking about corporatisation of some government business enterprises to make them more efficient.
The Government's planning legislation will simplify the planning process and be of considerable benefit to small business and there will be a more straightforward appeals process and simplified land use lease management. We might even be able to cope with the block of land in Deakin that we have been discussing recently. We have already moved to liberalise retail trading hours to make Canberra better able to compete with New South Wales. The Government's public sector reform will reduce expenditure in this year and in future years and this will reduce the long-term taxation burden on businesses and on the rest of the community.
The Public Sector Management Board has been established to achieve better use of our staff and resources and to reduce the cost to the public, in general, and to business in particular. Corporatisation, of course, will make the Government's major utilities more commercial in approach, increase their efficiency, reduce costs to the community and, where appropriate, return a dividend to the taxpayer. We have talked about the agencies, in particular, that we intend to corporatise. In addition to that, we have a committee reviewing the Beddall report on small business to see how we can help small business in particular and pick up the recommendations from that report to the extent that they are applicable to the Australian Capital Territory.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I think that to debate generally the theory of credit and how it applies in the national economy is nothing more than academic, even if the debate is a learned one. It is nothing but academic; it does not do a great deal for us in the Territory because we do not control the major factors that lead to levels of interest rates and the kind. I think that in our own small way we are doing a great many things to make things easier for business, and I know that that is not entirely successful. Mr Stevenson, I know you talked about small business, a shop that has gone out of business in Melba. If you look around Canberra there are a lot of them and there are some things that we can do to mitigate the effects of the economy; but you cannot act as an insurer against all businesses when times are tough, or even when times are good.
Mr Stevenson: If we let people know about the credit creation system that will solve the problem.
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