Page 3527 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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MR KAINE (4.57): When people begin to get into areas with which they are not familiar, they are likely to run into "rocks in clouds". I think that Mr Lamont is likely to do that if he does not learn a little bit more about what is actually happening with air traffic control in Australia. He clearly does not understand what is happening; nor does he understand that what is happening will have no impact whatsoever on what happens at the Canberra Airport. But I will come back to that.
I want to make some general comments about business development strategy in Canberra and the place in it of this report that we are looking at now and the Chief Minister's comments in connection with it. It is very interesting that we keep coming back to this business when we are now moving into our fifth year of self-government. One has to wonder sometimes just what the Government and its instrumentalities are in fact doing about fostering business in Canberra. I do not recall seeing one single major business development in Canberra under this Labor Government. The Chief Minister claims credit for all sorts of things; but in fact, when you look at what is actually on the ground, there is no major business enterprise that this Government can claim exists because of anything that it did. Look at what is happening in the technology park at Bruce. There is nothing new there. What has happened there in the last couple of years that this Government can claim any credit for? Absolutely nothing.
What is happening at the industrial area at Hume, which was once touted by this Labor Government as a place where all sorts of incredible things were going to happen? There were going to be all sorts of technology there and large international corporations were going to move in. Where are they? I keep coming back to the point that we have lots of words and the Chief Minister claims lots of credit for things that happen, but nothing is happening. This paper is just another paper in a long series of papers and in a long series of words and rhetoric that we hear about what is being done, what can be done and what should be done.
This particular paper contains 28 recommendations. It is dated April 1993. We are now close to November. Is there one recommendation in this document that the Government has acted upon? The Chief Minister said lots of good words about it a month later, in May. What single recommendation from that report has the Government acted upon? In other words, why did these eminent people spend their time putting this report together? As is always the case, nothing will flow from it. I am getting very concerned about what is happening as a result of all of the work that has been done by the South East Economic Development Council. Nick Greiner and I established that in 1991. At the last ACT-NSW consultative council meeting last year, which I attended, I expressed my concern that when I retire from politics in around the year 2000 I would like to see some of the recommendations - - -
Mr Connolly: Having come back to the Liberal leadership a couple of times by then.
MR KAINE: Mr Connolly was there and he knows what I said, because he was sitting next to me. I said that I would like to see some of the recommendations of the South East Economic Development Council actually put in place before then. That organisation has done an enormous amount of work over a three-year period. They have produced some excellent reports. They have brought together a great deal of statistical information that is useful, yet not one thing has been done to turn one single recommendation into reality.
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