Page 2024 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Gentleman): Order! The member’s time has expired.
MR SMYTH: I will take my second 10 minutes. There is the challenge for the Chief Minister. Come back to the battlefield, sit down and do so when we finish the amendments. Oh, we have already missed the opportunity! My apologies, Chief Minister. You have already got away with it. That is a shame, an absolute shame, because these things do need to be discussed and I think that organisations need an opportunity to defend themselves. These people find out on Tuesday that they are facing execution, the death squad, and they are put up against the wall blindfolded at 10.12 on Thursday night. “Regret” is an interesting word. You regret that you had to do that, but you did it anyway. If you had any sense of decency or courtesy, you would have sent it off to a committee, but such is life.
What the government will create with this change when it is linked with particularly the cuts to the business community is an impression that it is a government that is not interested in expanding its tax base. I cannot for the life of me understand why you would not be interested in doing that. You complain that you do not have enough money to spend on services and would spend more if you could, but there are things being done in this budget that defy logic. That is because the government no longer has a strategic plan. The economic white paper was lauded by the government. Perhaps it was Ted Quinlan’s creation and therefore has to be destroyed and all memory erased. I wonder whether the government will be airbrushing Mr Quinlan out of some of the Assembly photos and out of the Labor Party hierarchy and its history because he has betrayed the Chief Minister by leaving the government in the lurch. Perhaps the Treasurer betrayed Mr Quinlan by not taking his advice much earlier.
Mr Stefaniak: Comrade who?
MR SMYTH: Mr Stefaniak is probably right; he will probably end up being “comrade who?” I am sure that Mr Quinlan is proud of his achievements. Clearly the Chief Minister, unfortunately, does not understand. Perhaps the tourism minister will take up the challenge before we pass this bill and adjourn debate on it. Maybe he will take up the challenge of adjourning the debate on it and going off and talking to the industry. Minister, have you spoken to the industry in the last two days about what this means? Have you sat around a table with all of them?
Mr Barr: Yes, at the chamber of commerce thing on Tuesday night.
MR SMYTH: I know you briefed them for an hour, but have you sat down and talked to them? Have you gone out and talked to the ordinary individuals that run small businesses that depend on tourism, because of the multiplier effect there? If you have not got a copy of your report, I can lend you a copy if you want to read it. There it is: the December 2004 report of Access Economics on the economic contribution of tourism to the ACT. It really is worth a read. This is so short-sighted. This is so silly. This is drawing back on an area where you can actually make some money.
If your fear is of actually making money, you need to get over it. It is not a bad thing to make money because you can then channel it into disabilities, child protection,
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