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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 2643 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

It obviously shows that this government does have the right strategy, the right vision and is achieving the knowledge-based economy that Mr Quinlan himself has talked about.

MR SPEAKER: Supplementary?

MR HIRD: This is amazing. This is absolutely fantastic, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: A supplementary without a preamble.

MR HIRD: Chief Minister, given that outsourcing by the Commonwealth has helped with this amazing growth of the private sector, would you agree that Canberra has managed to hang on to more than its fair share of outsourcing work?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I would agree with that. It is interesting that we have held on to outsourcing work in Canberra and those businesses have then grown to provide services not just to the federal government but right around the world.

Just in the last month CSC, who came to Canberra because of outsourcing, set up in Canberra one of their three worldwide research and development bases. Why did they do that? Was that to do with federal government outsourcing? It was not directly to do with that at all. It was because they see Canberra as a great place to do business and a great place to do research and development.

It was not that long ago that, again, those opposite indicated that we would be doomed, that Canberra would be a ghost town-remember that, Mr Speaker?-that we would all be ruined, that we were going to have job losses, and that the city was going to die. I can remember Mr Berry talking about the whole of Canberra going across the border in removalist trucks because of the nasty federal government. Now we hear from those opposite that, because of the federal government, we have got growth in this city.

Mr Speaker, remember all the insults from those opposite about our business incentive scheme, about the Fujitsus, the IBMs, the EDSs, the Compucats? What has happened is that they are employing. What has happened is those companies have grown and expanded in this city. They have achieved what we needed them to achieve, and that is lots of spin-offs into new companies, which is great news for Canberra.

But I think the real issue of this question today is those opposite. They have just been chronically inconsistent. We heard them say just now that what has happened is nothing to do with this government-the fact that we have got the lowest unemployment rate and the fastest growing IT industry is nothing to do with us at all. But if the grass dies it is our fault.

MR BERRY: My question to the Chief Minister relates to our Olympic Games soccer bid. Mr Speaker, I have a present for the Chief Minister to remind her what happens to tropical plants when they come to the ACT.

MR SPEAKER: You can put that down. Put that down and remove it immediately.

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