Page 1507 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 18 May 1993
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regular contact with the ACT Government and its Ministers. Certainly that contact produced no valuable results on a whole series of issues of importance to that community over the last few years. To name but one, on the question of the size of workplace groups under the occupational health and safety legislation, the business community of the ACT was utterly and completely ignored.
Mr Deputy Speaker, this statement today represents something of the same kind of trick that one sees when one goes to an amusement park and stands in front of one of those distorting mirrors which make a fat person look very thin or a thin person look very fat. The fact of life is that the economic indicators in this Territory have been good for reasons entirely disassociated with the activity of this Government. I cite as evidence for that assertion the fact that the ACT economy has always performed better than the national economy. It certainly did during the period of the Alliance Government. During the period of the Alliance Government there was no appreciable decline or change in the ACT's economic position vis-a-vis the rest of Australia. In fact, for as long as I can remember, for as long as I have lived in the ACT, that has been the case; and I suspect that for as long as many others who have lived here for longer can remember that has been the case. To say, as the Chief Minister says, that the ACT - - -
Mr Kaine: I can remember longer than most, and, yes, it always has been the case.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed; and that goes back a long way. To say, as the Chief Minister says, that the ACT economy is growing strongly, reflecting the success of the Government's policies, just does not bear up to the cold hard scrutiny of day. I cite as an example of this incapacity of the Government to deal with this issue the fact that it has not really adopted any policies in this Territory which have made business in this town positively attractive when a person in another State, for example, is choosing a venue or a place to which to move, and therefore making the ACT competitive in a national market for mobile business.
I cite again, Mr Deputy Speaker, the facts which we have to bear in mind when looking at the underlying trends in growth in the ACT. In the six years from 1983-84 to 1989-90 Australia's total private sector employment grew by 28 per cent. That compared with a Canberra growth rate of 31.9 per cent. So there we are; there was strong growth in the ACT, at least by comparison with other parts of Australia. But, while small business accounted for almost 32 per cent of Australian employment growth in that six-year period between 1983-84 and 1989-90, in the ACT only 700 jobs were created in small business during that period out of a total growth of 16,100 new jobs. You do not have to be Einstein to work out that our performance in small business growth in the ACT is abysmal. We simply are not creating the environment in which small businesses will grow.
I think it is great for the Government to talk about attracting major enterprises to the ACT. We would all welcome that. But we all know that at the end of the day what will sustain the viability of this community in economic terms into the future is not the activity of large business; it is the activity of small business. In that area the signs are extremely disturbing. The Government really has not provided any basis to expect that those figures are going to improve.
Mr Berry: What signs are they?
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