Page 2096 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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Chief Minister, every time a tender is called and is allocated to people outside this Territory the Territory loses revenue. I hope that Mr Moore is listening, because that is one area where we can really gain some of that money. The Territory loses out on revenue because most of the medium sized businesses in the ACT have to pay payroll tax, but businesses located outside the ACT do not pay payroll tax to the ACT Government. Therefore, you not only lose out on revenue but you lose out on job opportunities, and job opportunities for our youth are what we are all about. By excluding local contractors from supplying goods and services to your Government you are responsible for reducing your own payroll tax. You are also responsible for stifling employment opportunities and for not stimulating the economy.
Here comes the real crunch. What the Chief Minister should do is balance her budget. This is the No. 1 requirement of any commercial organisation, and the Government is nothing more than a large commercial organisation. Does the Chief Minister realise that in 1993-94 she spent just on $22.8m in servicing her debt? At current borrowings that will increase to $40.4m in 1997-98. In other words, half the current revenue from payroll tax will be eaten up just in servicing the debt that will be incurred in the next two years. Chief Minister, that is putting the cart before the horse. That is going the wrong way in creating a viable business climate in the Territory for business to create jobs.
The Chief Minister talks further about a training budget. I can assure the Chief Minister that, unless business has the financial capacity to hire more people, she can train all she likes but she will not create one job. The only way to ensure that jobs are created is to remove some of the imposts on business, such as payroll tax. In this way you will give business the capacity to hire more people. As most people in the business community are aware, payroll tax is the second highest income earner in this Territory for this Government. Although the business community would not expect such a tax to be abolished completely, it would certainly like to see it reduced gradually over the next two years. By gradually reducing this tax you will then create employment opportunities, particularly for the young, and you will be stimulating the local economy.
The Chief Minister outlined spending $1m on tourism over the next four years. That is a mere $250,000 per annum. If you add that $250,000 to what the ACT now spends on promotion overseas, which is $300,000, you have just over half a million dollars. That is just over $500,000 for the promotion of the ACT in overseas markets. Let us compare that with the two other small jurisdictions. Tasmania, with a population of 471,000, currently spends $1.5m, and the Northern Territory, with a population of 169,000 - just over half the population of this Territory - spends $4.5m. You should see what tourism does for the Northern Territory. How, Chief Minister, do you really think we are going to attract more overseas tourists with such a small amount of funding? Yet tourism is the ACT's largest industry.
As I have already indicated, what we spend on tourism promotion is a mere pittance. There are businesses in this Territory, some of which are medium sized, which spend much more trying to establish an export market than the ACT Tourism Commission spends on marketing the whole city overseas. Individual companies actually spend more than that. Your own Economic Development Division, no doubt, keeps you informed of what tourism means to the ACT community and to its economy. Whilst on the subject of the Economic Development Division, perhaps, Chief Minister, you could indicate
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