Page 3498 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
seminars and went through the legislation said that their fears had been allayed. It does not matter that, because it could be played upon, it has been played upon.
The surveys do not bear out the claims that Mr Mulcahy has made. They may do one day. If interest rates change, if the petrol crisis impacts upon the economy, business confidence will fall. We know that. It is a volatile thing. You will find that when you scratch people, you do surveys, you get the simple answers from time to time about government red tape, regulation or something, but, overall, the surveys of the last couple of years contradict what you are saying.
We have had a low population growth. It is something that we still wrestle with. We find it difficult to reconcile the fact that we have increased participation in the labour force, we have had several years of buoyant house sales and, as discussed earlier, we have a very tight rental market, yet officially our population has not grown. That is odd and we will pursue it to reconcile the numbers that do not add up in terms of the economy. That is the situation within the borders. If we look at the situation around Canberra, what I would like to call greater Canberra, we will find that greater Canberra has a higher growth rate.
If you look at the economic white paper—not just to find negatives in it but if you actually look at it—you will see that it immediately discusses the fact that the ACT economy is actually a regional economy and we do work within the region. We have seen growth in and around Canberra. We have seen growth in employment. We have certainly seen growth in the economy.
As Mr Corbell rightly pointed out, we have a few cranes in the sky, and it is always very nice for a government to be able to point to cranes in the sky. Those cranes in the sky in large part have had to do with the government. It is the government that is working with the ANU and building that precinct on the periphery of the campus. We have done that. It is the government—
Mrs Dunne: There aren’t any cranes there.
MR QUINLAN: There will be student residences over there and there will be more.
Mr Smyth: There are no cranes.
MR QUINLAN: I look forward to there being more cranes in the sky, which will be even better. By the end of the year, we will have the NICTA building coming out of the ground.
Mr Smyth: It has only taken three years.
MR QUINLAN: Of course it has. It has taken longer than we would have liked, but—
Mr Smyth: Even you got rejected by your planning laws.
MR QUINLAN: I do not think it was our planning laws, Mr Smyth.
Mr Smyth: It was. The DA got rejected three times.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .