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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1180 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

airline, one which has a reputation in the industry for being an organisation that is well managed and well run and that knows what it is doing. They are about to embark on a major expansion of their activities and they are suggesting to us that they would like to centre that new activity on our airport.

I think that we have to consider that seriously because we have not had too many opportunities, as I have said already. We have not had people hammering on our door actually demanding space at the airport. We have had to work assiduously to encourage people to come here. So, when you get an offer like that, you are duty bound to look at it seriously. The Government has done that. We have before us two significant reports, both by local consulting companies of good repute.

At 5.00 pm the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MR KAINE: We have first of all a report prepared by ACIL Consulting for Impulse Airlines. You might say that we have to look at that one a bit carefully because the client was Impulse, but I think most of us know that ACIL is a reputable organisation. We might want to look for a little bit of bias in there, but we should be able to take what is in it pretty much at face value. The other one, however, is of more significance perhaps for us because it was done by Access Economics and it was done for the Government. The job of Access Economics was to look at what Impulse and ACIL said and see whether what they said was right.

There is a lot of coincidence in what is in the two documents, but the bottom line is that Access Economics, whose document is the one that I find most persuasive, concludes that even in the most pessimistic case - in the worst case scenario - the proposal is a good one for Canberra. I am not going to go into the details of it. You can argue whether it is about 230 or 240 jobs and whether it is about 80,000 or 90,000 new passenger over a year or whatever, which are all variables, but the fact is that they are all positives. For that reason, I believe that this project is one in which the Government can reasonably invest; so I support the proposal by the Government to provide some financial support to Impulse.

Earlier today Ms Tucker, I think it was, said, "Is this money for the management of the airport?". Of course it is not. The airport owners and managers will be making their own arrangements with Impulse. There will be some sort of contract between them. No doubt, they will be assisting Impulse to come here because it suits them to have this airline on their property. But that is not our business. Those sorts of arrangements between two private companies are nothing to do with me and I do not want to know about them. But I think that the Government is entitled to take up the proposal and say, "On the basis of the evidence before us, there is benefit to this community economically, socially and in every other way in having this airline come here. Therefore, we will make a small investment". I use the word "small" advisedly because, in the context of the future potential for this move, I think that the $8m up front and a couple of million dollars over five years in payroll tax waivers are not substantial sums.

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