Page 510 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
2 The future shaping of the ACT
Up to now the ACT economy has achieved above average growth, due to the influence of federal government expenditure. Even during previous Liberal Governments this has been the case overall, if not in every year. It will not be the case in future, regardless of who is is power federally.
The Fightback! package implies a considerable winding back of government expenditure and, perhaps more important, employment of Commonwealth public servants. There is no doubt that throughout the rest of the country, hostility to "Canberra" is widespread. Canberra-bashing can be expected to increase; even the use of coarse expressions like "knee
ping" recently quoted by Peter Reath will be popular elsewhere. Within the ACT itself, the Liberal Party needs to recognise that a much reduced role for government is in the national interest.
The Commonwealth, through the Grants Commission/Premiers Conference process, can similarly be expected to be increasingly tough on Canberra, justifying such action on the grounds of bringing the ACT back to "more normal" levels of per capita funding.
The question is: how can a reduced role for government, sad less Commonwealth funding of Canberra residents, convert into a positive for the ACT?
The answer lies in the way in which the private sector can capitalise on the intrinsic advantages which the ACT presents, and the environment which is created by the ACT Government to enable it to do so. This in turn requires an understanding of the factors which constitute competitiveness the attractiveness of the ACT location within a competitive Australian economy. This could be quite a detailed undertaking in its own right (and would be a valuable study) but the main factors include:
510
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .