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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1249 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

on their own, would not be able to compete. It would even be difficult for them collectively to be able to compete with the very large national and multinational companies that will be bidding for this Commonwealth work. For some time, I ran a public campaign trying to encourage this Government to do something, to put some resources into this private sector, to work with them and to help them, to get collectives if you like, to get consortiums together, so that they could bid effectively for the outsourced work. I was disappointed then and I continue to be disappointed at the response. Maybe the Chief Minister, when she replies, can tell me more about what happened a week or so ago when an excellent ACT company and an Adelaide company got together. I do not think they had too much ACT assistance for that.

The Federal member, Bob McMullan, and I ran a campaign on this. The day we were making some remarks Mr De Domenico - do you remember him? - had something to say. On the same day, obviously in response to our campaign - and a very slow response, because we had been talking for a while - he brought out a media release which said that he would establish an ACT Supplier Development Committee to work on this.

Mrs Carnell: Which has happened.

MR WOOD: I will tell you the priority it had, Chief Minister. He put out his statement on 18 November. He had to hurry it up a bit because I was out there talking about the need for this. His last sentence read:

The ACT Supplier Development Committee will hold its first meeting early next year.

It was not going to meet for two months. This was the sort of priority that the Government gave to it. I would be very happy to get a progress report from the Chief Minister, to see whether that has been hyped up a bit and whether they have been able to generate something. There was no sign of that at all at the time.

I want to add one more point of caution. It has been a source of minor worry to me for a little time. It concerns the proposals for an international airport and a very fast train. I think there is too much talk about those proposals and what they may do for Canberra. I support the proposals and I think they will do good things for Canberra. We need to identify some of those things, as Mr Corbell seeks to do. But I think we talk about them too much. What are we going to do to attack the recession? A very fast train and an international airport. Okay, let us have them; but let us not use that as the answer to our problems. There are 1,000 other important things to be done now. Let us get down and do things now and let us not think about just those two important future projects.

Let me make one final point, Mr Speaker. I commend the Government on one important matter - in the overall budget context it is a relatively minor matter - and that is "the establishment of an active environmental education program for `Mugga Mugga' ". There is an education program there now. What has happened at "Mugga Mugga" has been the result of great work by ACT government officers, with a great deal of voluntary effort, including by one of the very large unions in town. By their work, they have put up buildings and an education program too. I pick out the word "active" from that sentence and take that to mean a teacher on site.

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