Page 2509 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 23 August 1994
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Mr De Domenico: Extra, on top of the other 4,000 they are going to create anyway.
MRS CARNELL: Extra; on top of the others. We can do that only if we can change the attitude in the ACT to something like the attitude in Queensland, Wollongong and Newcastle, where they are in the business of encouraging these people and finding ways around problems they might have, rather than creating new ones.
This is apparent when you look at investment in the ACT. The Bureau of Statistics figures are very interesting. In the March quarter this year Australia had a nearly 5 per cent increase in investment; the ACT had an 8 per cent decrease. Why is this the case? We know that the Territory is a wonderful place in which to live. Why is it not a wonderful place in which to do business? To answer that I think you have only to look at Government policy and at the Government's lack of commitment to encouraging new businesses, giving them a hand, and getting their proposals, their innovations, their inventions up and running; its lack of commitment to things that can make the ACT turn around, that can create jobs for our young people and provide a business climate where people do not think of Canberra as just a place that has the Federal Parliament, which makes laws to increase taxes and so on, but as a great place in which to do business.
We have a commitment from the Government for ecotourism. Wonderful! Let us see it get up and running. Let us see the ACT become the best place in Australia, which it easily could be, for ecotourism. We have some wonderful opportunities in that area. Why do we not look at a proposition for growing some of the native fruits that existed in this region at one time? We know that this is possible, we know that it is economically sound; but we need a government that is behind business.
MR LAMONT (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Housing and Community Services, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (4.27): I rise also to support the thrust and intent of this matter of public importance. Before coming to a range of initiatives that this Government has undertaken and collaboratively supports, along with other members of the Assembly and a range of business organisations, I need to correct a number of misapprehensions that Mrs Carnell addressed herself to. The first of those has to do with the ACT Inventors Association. The ACT Inventors Association visited my office, as the responsible Minister. After fairly considerable discussion about the types and style of services they provide and the accommodation requirements they may have, I negotiated a meeting with the Economic Development Division of the Chief Minister's Department, where we again went through the types of facilities that may be made available.
Let us dispel a few myths. The first is that there was a request at a Weston Creek Community Association meeting from a representative of the Inventors Association for access to Holder High School. I indicated at that meeting, as I have subsequently, that it would be inappropriate for the Government to give any area of the Holder High School to the Inventors Association while we were still considering the possibility of the use of that school for purposes to which the community in Weston Creek wishes us to give consideration, that is, the maintenance of the school as a type of education facility - not necessarily an operating school, but an education-related facility.
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