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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1590 ..

government announced a proposal to establish a research and development grants scheme to encourage and support small and medium sized businesses in research and the development of new technology which has commercial application.

The support for this proposal from the business sector has been magnificent, and I am pleased to announce today that not only is the proposal going ahead but the funding is to double in its first year. The grants scheme will now receive $11 million over the next three years, up from the $9 million proposed. The sum of $18 million is being allocated for electronic service delivery, improving access by Canberrans to government services on-line. In coming months the government will make announcements about projects which will be funded from this injection.

I can indicate now that every Canberran will see a dramatic improvement in government service delivery as a result of this funding. Moving government accounts on-line for payment and billing, enhancing access to technology in the health and education sector, and providing improved access to government information across agencies will be the key focus of expenditure on this exciting program.

Mr Speaker, I also want to foreshadow that one of the areas to which the government will be applying funding from this program will be integrated health care. The storage and transmission of secure health care data between providers about their patients will make a substantial contribution to improving the provision of services to those patients and will allow a more integrated approach to delivery of services to people who access more than one provider.

When TransACT rolls out its cable system across the ACT, beginning next year, the ACT will become the hi-tech city of the world. The government wants to ensure that as many Canberrans benefit as possible from accessing that technology, both in a business and a community sense.

To achieve that, $130,000 will be provided to fund two new programs aimed at improving access to the Internet for the ACT community. The first program will provide a site which links all ACT community information, enabling access directly to individual groups' websites and resources. But that is not much good for groups not on the Internet, so the second part of the program provides assistance to peak community groups to get onto the net-to establish a presence there so they can share in the benefits of the new knowledge-based economy.

Mr Speaker, for those of us, like you and I, who acquire much of our knowledge in different ways to computers, I am pleased to announce an extension of the ACT Library Service. We are providing $150,000 in 2000-01, rising to $220,000 in 2001-02, to open the new Gungahlin Library early next year.

Superannuation

Mr Speaker, superannuation is a very important subject. When I became Treasurer I said that the most significant long-term challenge confronting this community is the unfunded superannuation liability which, unchecked, has the potential to ruin any benefits of

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