Page 266 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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I have also established the Business Services Centre in the City. That is an extremely successful venture. It is providing practical and immediate support and assistance to people in business and people wishing to set up in business. I was very pleased last week to be able to launch the Business Licence Information Service, which is a telephone information service, again to make it easier for business people to get into business, particularly by providing them with all the information that they need on licensing and regulation arrangements in relation to the business in which they are interested. So, that has all been very useful and practical assistance.
Madam Speaker, we have also undertaken a lot of work aimed at establishing new industries in the ACT. The chief one that occurs to me at the moment is the casino. In contrast to the endless dithering of the Alliance, the Labor Government was able to make progress on the casino - to establish the casino legislative framework, find somebody who wished to develop it and find a site on which it could be developed. The casino, which is scheduled to open before October this year, will provide a number of new jobs, particularly for young people in the ACT. They will run into some hundreds of jobs. Further hundreds of jobs will be created by the permanent casino when that construction activity begins. So, we have actually assisted new industries like that to get going in a way that our predecessors, the Alliance, were not able to do.
Madam Speaker, I have also taken a great deal of personal interest in the tourism industry. It is my pleasure to be the Minister responsible for that industry in the ACT, because it has shown very encouraging signs of maturity and development in the past year or so. We have now a streamlined Tourism Commission which is spending the same amount of money on marketing the ACT as was achieved under the Alliance, although of course it is being spent now in a much more efficient manner. We have plans also to develop the Tourism Commission so that it will contain a development unit and a unit aimed at getting new and improved attractions and events in the ACT.
I am sure that members would agree that tourism, the casino and all of those hospitality areas are extremely fertile ground for young people's jobs. They are the sorts of jobs to which young people are attracted. They are very useful to people who particularly might want short-term jobs or some part-time work. But most importantly they offer a sustained industry in the ACT, which will be of ongoing benefit to people wanting to take a full part in the employment market.
Madam Speaker, I have also expressed a great deal of interest in the ACT's capacity for high-technology industries and, in particular, telecommunications industries. We have recently started a new campaign aimed at attracting high-technology and telecommunications business to the ACT. I have launched a new brochure and I have met on a continuing basis with senior people from both Optus and Telecom, and it is my intention to build on the business that both those companies already have in the ACT and to assist them to build up their presence here in order to provide a greater range and number of jobs, particularly for our young people.
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