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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2028 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

to improve the links with community care; to achieve some of the long-needed reforms in mental health and disability services; to increase the amount of money we spend in disability services and mental health; to increase the amount of money we spend in home-based care programs such as HACC, and to increase them quite significantly at a time when the ACT is under significant financial pressure. I do not think that is a bad record; but I have to say that we can improve, and we have the plans in place to achieve that over coming years.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Part 9 - Department of Business, the Arts, Sport and Tourism

Proposed expenditure - Business and Employment, $9,311,000 (comprising net cost of outputs, $9,311,000)

MR CORBELL (6.46): Mr Speaker, in addressing the business area of the budget this evening, I want to make a few very important points. The Labor Party's disagreement with the Government on this issue is a philosophical one. It is about how best to go about encouraging businesses in our city to grow and how to go about encouraging businesses in our city to develop.

Mrs Carnell: You said before that you would not have any business incentive programs.

MR CORBELL: The Chief Minister makes the point that we would not have any business incentive programs. I want to put the Chief Minister straight on that issue. What the Labor Party has always said on business incentive schemes is that we do not believe that providing financial incentives to any business that wants to come to Canberra in a haphazard and unplanned manner is the best way to develop the economic base of our city. That is one of the fundamental criticisms we have of this Government's continuing development of the business incentive scheme as it stands.

I would like to draw to the Chief Minister's attention, indeed to the Assembly's attention, a comment that was made by the director of Access Economics on radio 2CN on 17 June this year. He was asked by the morning show compere on 2CN what he thought about the ALP's plan to concentrate on building local business here first. He was asked whether the business base here was diverse enough to build upon or whether we needed to chase business outside of the Territory. His response is very interesting reading. I would like to read it out to you. I will quote it in full. It says:

It is not as diverse as I would like to see it but equally I take Andrew Whitecross's point that there are sometimes dangers in chasing business from outside too hard. If we get them here solely by, for example, offering them payroll tax holidays or cheap land and the like, then maybe we're doing it in ways that we shouldn't and the ACT wouldn't actually benefit that much. If we do it by saying, "Look, we have a young, educated, highly skilled work force, excellent transportation and communication links", if we win them on our strengths, then that's great but I don't think we should chase them with taxpayers' dollars.

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