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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3477 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

This is a bit of negotiation that Mrs Carnell did and took credit for some weeks ago. How are the ACT taxpayers involved in that? If we can get some jobs that will be fantastic. So, that leaves 1,700 jobs, and how many full-time equivalent positions does the Government think it has created?

Mr Speaker, the other jobs, it is said, are created through private sector enhancement. Private sector jobs, Mr Speaker, are to be enhanced by the Government. It is just more pipedreams. We have not reached them; we have not seen them; we are not going to see them for a while. The United States experience generally is that there is a growing acceptance that downsizing and government involvement in job creation in the private sector are ineffective. President Clinton, only two months ago, when announcing that he was going to force up the minimum wage, said that the good news of the recovery in the American economy had not got down to ordinary people. The profits had stayed with business. The recovery had not been transferred into jobs. Yet that is the very thing that these 2,700 jobs, or the 1,700 jobs that are left, are dependent on from Mrs Carnell.

Let us look at the new incentives for business in the ACT. Is this really money for jobs or is it money for mates? Is this money to go back to the mates in the broad sense? Is this just money for business as a way of setting the priority for the Carnell Liberal Government? They are interested in getting the money across to business wherever they possibly can. Their claim is that new incentives for businesses in the ACT provide money for business in the form of grants, schemes, lower taxes, et cetera, to the level of about $3.185m in additional funding - that is beyond what was done last year and what Labor carried out - for the business development fund, for AusIndustry and for employment programs. What about the accommodation for Canberra's third business incubator? As best I could find, there is no money set aside for that third business incubator. Perhaps it is just money in kind - in other words, providing the accommodation. But really, what this money is about is looking after the business sector. That is what it is about, Mr Speaker. It is not about jobs. The jobs are simply the justification.

Mr Speaker, I want to move on to lease administration. The Government is now changing to a rate of 75 per cent in terms of a change of use of a lease, contrary to the recommendations of the Stein report, which initially the Government had accepted, although they said they did not like it. Mr Humphries made this very clear. We know he did not like it, but they accepted it. The Government has moved that across into a budget scenario in order to say that we cannot change that; that it is a budget issue. It knows that I and Mr Osborne, at least - I thought the Greens as well, but I may stand corrected on that - have said that the Government is entitled to its budget. It has appointed somebody to examine this issue of lease renewal, and that is something that I will discuss with the Government in due time.

Mr Speaker, this budget is full of promises for unemployed Canberrans. Unfortunately, there are too many pipedreams and ethereal numbers. In fact, it uses the unemployed, Mr Speaker - this is the sad part about it - in what I consider a most appalling way. If it were advertising, Mr Speaker, the Minister for Consumer Affairs would have this Government in court for misleading, and the charge would be substantiated because this is shonky. The rhetoric misrepresents the truth. The rhetoric here misrepresents what is

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