Page 1508 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 18 May 1993
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MR HUMPHRIES: You were not listening, Mr Deputy Chief Minister, but I will repeat them. Of the 16,100 new jobs created in the ACT between 1983-84 and 1989-90, only 700 were in small business, compared with a national average of about a third of all new private sector jobs created in this country over that period. In other words, almost all the new jobs created in the ACT in the private sector have been in, as it were, large business, in large enterprises.
Ms Follett: Your figures are 10 years old.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, they are not. These are figures up until 1989-90. Those are figures available in a publication entitled "Small Business in Australia 1990". There are, to my knowledge, no more recent figures than that. If the Chief Minister has more, she can cite them when she concludes this debate.
Ms Follett: They are 10 years old.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Deputy Speaker, the figures have not changed.
Ms Ellis: How do you know? You just said that they are not available.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, how do you know that they have changed? Mr Deputy Speaker, the attitude of this Government towards small business is exhibited in all its glory by what has happened to two or three small proprietors of a shop in Woden, a matter which was raised earlier today in question time. Here we have two lessees of a business in Woden. They have been operating it for the last nine years. No doubt it has been there for at least that long, perhaps even longer; I am not aware. These people were advised earlier this year that their rent will increase by a massive 60 per cent since the last rent re-evaluation, which was in 1990.
Mr Kaine: Only three years ago.
MR HUMPHRIES: Only three years ago. So over a period of three years, during which time inflation has risen perhaps 5 per cent, or something like that, we have seen an increase in their rent of the order of 60 per cent.
Mr Kaine: If this was the private sector the landlord would be described as a greedy landlord.
MR HUMPHRIES: What did those opposite have to say about certain private sector operators who put up rents by those sorts of margins in other areas of ACT economic activity? They were scathing. I can recall the absent Mr Connolly making some very strong comments about the capacity of the private sector to bear that kind of ruthless behaviour on the part of landlords; yet here we have this Government, a large landlord in its own right, behaving more ruthlessly than any private sector operator would dare to behave in this Territory. That, Mr Deputy Speaker, is a matter of concern. These people were faced with a 60 per cent rent hike.
Mr Kaine: But that has been dropped in favour of straight-out eviction.
MR HUMPHRIES: We learn that it has been dropped. It is not going to be proceeded with. For what reason? The reason is that their lease is going to be terminated altogether. "We are going to save you the trouble of having to worry about rent increases in the future. We are going to knock you off altogether.
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