Page 557 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
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business policy strategy of any territory government since 1989. The white paper laid out some important themes and common ground for both the social and spatial plans that soon followed. The core strategies of these three documents were then drawn together in the Canberra plan announced by the Chief Minister in March of 2004.
While some predictable negativity from predictable sources was forthcoming at the time, the outcomes of the economic white paper tell a very different strong story. The headline figures show the government will have committed around $140 million to support economic white paper action initiatives since its release in 2003.
It has supported the big and the visible things. There is the $10 million contribution to the new Canberra-centric venture capital fund, ANU Connect. There is the $10 million for the new health building annex at the University of Canberra to house psychology and sports science services, with the new facility expected to be completed in September 2006. Around $20 million over five years has been provided for enterprise development programs such as the knowledge fund, the export growth program, the Canberra Business Advisory Service and the accelerating business innovation program. More importantly, these programs are leveraging further direct investment in the local economy. For example, the knowledge fund has an estimated total leverage factor of $12 external for every government dollar invested.
Then there is the $30 million upgrade program for the National Convention Centre. A project manager has now been appointed and design works are under way. The works proper will commence about the middle of this year. A sum of $10 million was provided to ACT schools to enhance ICT skills through initiatives such as a student digital passkey program, broadband access, electronic whiteboards and the provision of related technical support. An amount of $28 million in recurrent expenditure has been provided for tourism marketing and promotion.
There are smaller but no less effective initiatives such as seed funding that the government provided to establish a Canberra business angels investment network. In 2005 the Capital Angels Network was born and has now racked up over $500,000 in equity investments in small local companies. In addition, $1.4 million was provided to Screen ACT to showcase and develop our promising digital multimedia industry, and $1.2 million was allocated to the Small Business Commissioner. In 12 months the Small Business Commissioner has negotiated small business service charters for 10 ACT government agencies and taken a proactive approach to small business dispute resolutions. To date, 65 complaints from small businesses have been investigated and 62 have been resolved. A professional business-to-business resolution model has now been developed.
A raft of white paper initiatives and policies have been internally resourced by government agencies. They include: the small business friendly reforms to the government’s procurement system and procedures, including pre-tender consultation processes with local firms and new on-line document capabilities; changes to Canberra Connect to improve its ability to respond to small business inquiries and business licensing issues; ACTPLA’s current work on an electronic development and building system that will greatly streamline compliance processes for small businesses that operate in the land development and building sector and the business links to school
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