Page 3503 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 2005
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I also agree that we should look at other jurisdictions for ideas. Let us look beyond the other capital cities in this country to towns of comparable size, such as Geelong and Ballarat in Victoria; and Wagga and Armidale in New South Wales, for we are an odd mix between city and regional centre. We are unique in being the national capital and a city-state, which opens up special opportunities that I believe we could capitalise on a great deal more. To end my speech, there are many ways of looking at Canberra and looking at what contributes to success. No doubt we will have this debate over and over again but, on the whole, I find very little difference between Mr Quinlan’s approach and Mr Mulcahy’s approach. I think they both leave out far too much about what is important for Canberra.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella—Leader of the Opposition) (5.21): Mr Speaker, the opposition will not be agreeing to Mr Quinlan’s amendment because it is not worthy of support. I want to start where Mr Quinlan finished. He was talking about looking at the recent business surveys. Let us look at a couple of those. The July ACT and Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry business expectations survey pointed to a weaker performance in a number of categories. I will read from the recorded ABC news story. It says:
The Chamber of Commerce’s latest survey of business expectations shows profits and employment are flat for the first time in years.
The ACT has enjoyed a booming economy for the past nine years but in the last quarter that growth has flattened.
Profits are down, as is employment, with the Territory experiencing a shortage of skilled workers.
The long-term forecast for capital growth is also down.
Not so rosy! At the same time—in August—we had the Sensis survey. Again I will read the headline from an ABC story. It says:
A survey released today says the ACT small business sector is lagging behind the national average in several key performance areas.
There was good and bad in both those surveys, but they show that the gloss is off. The gloss is off because of the inaction of this government and, in particular, the inaction of this minister. It is interesting that there is this sudden pointing to the cranes on the skyline. According to the Treasurer, the cranes are all there because of his action. He refutes the claim that it is the planning laws that are stopping things from occurring. It was not. We have said it.
Let us go to somebody who is not normally aligned with the Liberal Party. George Wasson said he had $350 million to invest in a super fund that he helps control, but that he would not be investing in Canberra because it is just too hard. That is a slightly different view than that which the Treasurer was pointing to. Then the Treasurer put forward the notion that we got skun on some of our business programs. Some of them certainly did not work as well as they could have, but you have to look at the net overall effect. The net overall effect of us looking at bringing companies relating to IT to the territory was that the St George Trends magazine, when it did a survey of IT, called the
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