Page 4081 - Week 13 - Thursday, 10 November 1994
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in Downer to see what is happening there. You have only to walk around any shopping centre in this city or around any of the industrial areas in this Territory to see that things are not okay. You have only to stop and talk to a few small business people to know that things are not okay. So much for the Chief Minister. I do not know what sort of world she lives in, or where she lives; but the world that she was talking about bore no relationship whatsoever to reality.
Then we had Mr Lamont. What does Mr Lamont do? Mr Lamont attacks the Opposition. We are not in government. Hopefully, we will be, come February, and then we will put into place plans that are well developed to do something about the problems of business in this Territory. We have observed the performance over the last two or three years of Mr Lamont and Mr Connolly. Every idea we put forward, whether it is rates reform or whatever, the Government picks up and implements and says, "Look how good we are". Even if it does only a Clayton's review of rates, it says "Look how good we are. We have reviewed rates". If Mr Lamont, Mr Connolly and the Chief Minister think I am going to stand up here and outline in detail what the Liberal Party will do to assist small business next year, so that they can then conduct an election campaign for the next three months trying to knock off everything we say, they have rocks in their head.
Let us have a look at what their policies are. We did not hear from them about what their policies are; just criticism. There was very little substance in what either of them said, but there were one or two comments we cannot allow to pass. The Chief Minister talked about all the good stuff they are doing for business, and she gave an example. She said, "Even today, we tabled a Bill that gives the casino some tax relief". I would submit that the casino is one business in this town that does not need any. If we have surplus revenue that we can give away or dispose of, why do we not have a look at the small businesses that are struggling every day and give them some tax relief and let the casino take care of itself? I do not think the casino needs any support or any help in a financial sense from this Government, or from the taxpayers or small businesses of this Territory. It is the last thing they need. They are quite capable of carrying the costs of their business.
Let us look at what has happened. Mr Stefaniak talked about some of these things. This Government is much in favour of private enterprise, much in favour of small business. They pay lip-service to the concept of small business, as the Chief Minister says, being the engine of economic development. I have pulled out some statistics, with 1990-91 as the base year. That was the year when we had an Alliance Government, which these people are so scathing of. I then looked at the estimates for last year, 1993-94, and made a direct comparison. For payroll tax, in 1990-91 the estimated revenue was $68.6m; in 1993-94 it was $93.3m - a 34 per cent increase. What has been the movement of the CPI since 1990-91? About 15 per cent would be a generous estimate. But payroll tax has increased by 34 per cent. For financial institutions duty, in 1990-91 our estimate was $8m worth of revenue; in 1993-94 the estimate was $23.7m - a 300 per cent increase in financial institutions duty.
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