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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1263 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

But when you look at it in the budget, Advancing Canberra money does not go to the Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation; it goes to the Department of Business.

Mrs Carnell: And the Arts, Sport and Tourism.

MR CORBELL: Yes, but you created the Canberra Tourism and Events Corporation as a separate stand-alone organisation. I have received a briefing on it. You know very well, Chief Minister, that that is a separate line item in the budget. It is completely separate from the Department of Business. It is meant to be virtually autonomous. That is my understanding. That is certainly what your Minister said a couple of weeks ago. But you do not give the support, the money, to Canberra Tourism; you give it to the department.

Is it really about tourism? I do not think so. It is not being run by Canberra Tourism. Is it about helping business? That is what you would think if it went into the Department of Business. If it is going into the Department of Business, what does it do to create jobs? What does it do to train people? What does it do to give them labour market experience? What does it do to create positions? It does not do anything. Again, $1.39m out of the $4.5m is not creating one single extra job.

The ACT business incentive scheme is one of the Chief Minister's favourites, I know, because she gets to go and cut lots of ribbons, dig lots of holes in the ground and get her photo in the paper all the time. The Government has added an extra $500,000 for funding of the business incentive scheme. Again this demonstrates the Government's complete lack of vision on how you build business in Canberra. Building business in Canberra is not about getting into a bidding war with the other States and Territories. It is not about throwing the very valuable money in our budget to any business that is desperate enough, needs the cash injection or needs some other benefit or subsidy to come to our Territory. What this support should be about is building business that is already here. It should be about giving support to those businesses that already exist in Canberra, which are already our strengths.

Mrs Carnell: I agree.

MR CORBELL: A cheese factory is not our strength, Chief Minister. It is completely out of context with all the things that your Government talks about.

Mrs Carnell: No, it is 100 jobs.

MR CORBELL: I see that you are changing tack now. What we should be talking about in this Territory is providing a strategic approach that builds on our strengths. But a cheese factory? That is fine. If they want to come, we will throw money at them. I do not see that building on our strengths. I do not see that building on any of our inherent strengths in this city - not our educational strength, not our scientific strength, not even our high-technology strength. Again, it is a misguided approach from this Government.

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