Page 374 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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society as a useful, contributing member. This has an enormous knock-on effect or capacity.
To get down to tintacks: the things that the chamber of commerce appears not to think important are a $128 million capital works project; 200 to 250 full-time construction jobs for the next two years, already commenced; Canberra businesses now already the beneficiaries of $10 million or thereabouts of pre-construction work on road works, major earthworks and some of the other site works that have been undertaken by ACT-based companies and ACT-based workers and employees—250 full-time construction jobs for just under two years.
The chamber of commerce is not interested in and thinks that 250 full-time construction jobs over 18 months is a waste of time. The ACT chamber of commerce thinks that a $128 million capital works project is a waste of money and time. A $128 million capital works project and all that entails, so far as the chamber of commerce is concerned, is not worth doing.
Mr Corbell: Look at them; they are all walking away.
MR STANHOPE: I am not surprised that they would walk away from one of their fellow travellers. Can you imagine the chamber of commerce saying that it does not want a $128 million capital works project to go ahead? It is not interested in 250 full-time jobs; it is not interested in $128 million worth of work going to ACT businesses; it is not interested in $128 million worth of local product going into the construction of this facility; it is not interested in the 200-plus full-time jobs, forever, which will be located in the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Can you imagine that the chamber of commerce, spouting the Liberal Party position, does not want, in the first instance, 250 full-time construction jobs, leading to 200 full-time corrections jobs into the future, forever, in the ACT? The chamber of commerce is not interested in a facility that will employ more than 200 people full time.
The chamber of commerce is not interested in a facility that would drag back from New South Wales the $10 million or so which we pay every year, year in, year out, to the New South Wales government. No matter where our prisoners are housed, there is a cost of their maintenance. At the moment, we simply write out a cheque and pay it to Morris Iemma in New South Wales and say, “Here is $10 million a year.” The chamber of commerce does not want that $10 million to be spent in the ACT.
The chamber of commerce is happy for all of the people that are employed to care for ACT prisoners in New South Wales to live in New South Wales, to spend their wages in New South Wales, to go to the local Supabarn, to go to the local shops and spend their money in the local shopping mall. The chamber of commerce does not want the 200 full-time workers at the Alexander Maconochie Centre to shop in ACT shops. It does not want their children to go to ACT schools or to participate in this society.
Chris Peters is out there rabbiting on about population growth and skill shortages—the two big issues, he tells me every time I meet him. The two big issues facing the territory are jobs growth, employment, and population. Here is a $128 million project generating 250 jobs during construction and 200 full-time jobs on completion in the ACT, and Chris Peters does not want them. Chris Peters does not want another 250 jobs in the short
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