Page 2455 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
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as that come to the ACT where the net outlay on the part of the Government, by way of policing and so on, is greater than the net revenue that it collects. If that has been a worthwhile objective in the past - if it has been worthwhile investing in the ACT economy through that process, bringing people from outside to do business in the ACT - why has it ceased to be so now? There cannot be any good answer to that. Clearly, there is benefit to our community and to our economy, and that is, I think, not lightly thrown to one side.
But I repeat that we have to ask ourselves: What is the morality in banning this exhibition, this trade, from the ACT and yet not banning the people who buy the goods? Mr Connolly said that it was inappropriate for the ACT to be promoting an international arms trade. Yet, of course, in the Australian context, the ACT is the home of the international arms trade in this country, if you like, because it is the home of the Australian Government, and that Government is the largest consumer by far of those goods exhibited at that exhibition.
Dr Kinloch argued that it was unnatural to have an arms exhibition in the ACT; that it ran against the grain of the ACT's natural advantages. That obviously was not apparent to the organisers in 1989 because they came here to the ACT very willingly. Dr Kinloch glossed over the fact that ADFA and other Defence Force requirements are essential to Canberra. Canberra is basically the home of Australia's defence education and defence practitioners. It is a natural place for people to come to if they wish to sell arms to the Australian Government. I really do not think that there is any evidence that the arms trade that occurred in 1989 "mucked up", as Dr Kinloch put it, Canberra's image as a tourist destination. I doubt that anyone cancelled their holiday in the ACT because they saw that there was an arms exhibition going on here at one time in the last two years.
We have to look beyond the rhetoric of this matter. We have to look at what legitimately government ought to be doing, and it seems to me that government, at this time in particular, ought to be promoting the welfare of the ACT economy and the viability of businesses in the ACT. The decision made by Mr Connolly and his Government, to ban these exhibitions in the future, in effect means that the ACT will miss out considerably in that regard. I certainly do not wish to go to the people whose businesses have been damaged by this decision of this Government and say, "Today is Hiroshima Day and we are commemorating the first use of atomic weapons against human beings. Therefore, your business will have to lose the $20,000 in profit it was planning to make by housing the people who are coming to this exhibition". I certainly will not be saying that to them and I think Mr Connolly would be a very brave man to go and do that himself.
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