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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (6 September) . . Page.. 2915 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

At the same time this company was convicted two or three times, from my recollection of it, for occupational health and safety breaches. I have previously raised concerns with the Chief Minister in this place about offering handouts to a company with such a poor record of workplace occupational health and safety. I have to say, Mr Speaker, that my concerns have deepened in recent days-

Mr Humphries: Is there a question here somewhere, Wayne?

MR SPEAKER: It is a very long preamble, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: Not nearly as long as the answers yesterday, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: We will see about that.

MR BERRY: I found out, and this is the punchline, that the company has now been sold to a Melbourne business and the newly trained workers are out of work. Of course, the business is going to Melbourne. Chief Minister, how can you justify this generous taxpayer-funded enhancement of the company in preparation for its sale to a Melbourne company and the subsequent loss of jobs in the territory? Don't you ever require a continuing commitment from these companies to the ACT, or do you just hand the money out to them willy-nilly?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I think Mr Berry may be speaking about a business incentive grant that was given in 1995-96, a very long time ago, and one that we have discussed many times in this place. The contract for Diskdeed expired in September 1997, which was also quite a long time ago. You know, it is interesting. You could not actually require a company not to sell or to stay in Canberra forever. It would be a little tiny bit tough to do that, I would have to say.

Mr Berry has raised the name of this company in this place before, and the questions have been answered before. As I say, to my knowledge no business incentive grant has been given to Diskdeed since 1995-96. My advice here is that the contract expired in September 1997, so that was also a long time ago.

Of course, after that period of time, the ACT government significantly changed the approach that we took to ACTBIS, the business incentives grants. To start with, that was before the last election as well. It was a different Assembly then. We require significantly greater levels of reporting now, as members would know because we have tabled all of that information about reporting requirements for our business incentive scheme recipients. Those reports have been made available before today to estimates committees and others.

This is a report only until January this year, Mr Speaker. I am sorry I do not have one that is more up to date than that but they certainly exist. I just do not have one with me. Until then the actual employment full time from the ACTBIS program was 1,075, and part time it was 196. In full-time equivalents, 1,173 jobs have been created as a result of the business incentive scheme approach. The average cost per job per year was something like $1,800, which we think is money extremely well spent if that gives somebody a job. These jobs traditionally have been long-term jobs.

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