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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 1999 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

a further disastrous fall in the number of home starts in Canberra in the March quarter of this year. I expect that you have seen those. I will tell you the figures. A total of 406 new home building projects began, compared with 740 for the previous quarter, and that was not a very high level in itself. Minister, what positive steps will you take to restore confidence in the ACT, without any sleight of hand, and to provide leadership to the private sector? What initiatives, rather than talk or as well as talk, will you take?

MR DE DOMENICO: I thank Mr Wood for his question. It perhaps should have been a dorothy dixer. Mr Wood would know that what the previous Government did in order to try to get the coffers full of money was release land. That was easily done. They released as much land as they could and put the money in the bank. Of course, under those circumstances, there is more supply than there is demand and prices go down. That is a simple business fundamental. Flood the market with land, bring the prices down and you get money into the coffers quick smart to try to fill in the black holes. We know what Labor governments of all persuasions, State and Territory, do with budgets. The best way to get a Labor government into a small business is to give them a big business and tell them to take it from there. That is what they tend to do.

Mr Wood, what does this Government do in contrast to that? First of all, we limit the supply of land until the prices can come back and peg up a little bit more. This year there will be a $600,000 threshold on payroll tax; next year it will be $800,000. There will be $5m through CanTrade and $1.8m for the new tourist information centre, and so on and so forth. The Red Tape Task Force has done what was promised and is starting to deliver right now. Next month there will be a small business summit to get business together. What have we done? We have saved millions of dollars in Comcare premiums.

Mrs Carnell: Millions on patients.

MR DE DOMENICO: We see more patients in hospitals. That is what we do, Mr Wood, across the board. You were there last night, Mr Wood, and you would have noticed that the business community is very confident in the ACT. Sure, they are going on a downturn right now, as businesses are all over the country. Mr Wood, we have done more in 18 months to make sure that small business employs people here in the ACT than you did in five years. In fact, Mr Wood, you did the opposite to us. You did the simplistic things that suited your agenda. You wanted money in the coffers. You flooded the market with land and made sure that land prices went down. There was a flood of land on the market. That is what you did. We constrain that, Mr Wood. We will continue to provide the atmosphere so that the private sector can continue to employ more people.

MR WOOD: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I point out to the Minister that home starts went up at the national level, but they went down here. He did not hear the past president of that body last night saying how some businesses will close in Canberra as a result of current policies. He just forgot that.

MR SPEAKER: Ask your question, Mr Wood.

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