Page 2423 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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agencies are the largest employer in the territory, so they have a very significant interest in addressing issues around skills and access to a workforce. It is quite pleasing that the commonwealth government have now come on board as a partner and a cash contributor to the Live in Canberra campaign.
There are now 27 organisations, including the ACT government, the commonwealth government, the private sector, leading companies and our universities now contributing to Live in Canberra. In addition to the ACT government’s significant support, there is now $130,000 of support being provided by those other partners. Of course, the Live in Canberra campaign continues to attract very strong public and vocal support from the Canberra Business Council and the ACT chamber of commerce. It is probably fair to say that the only organisation in Canberra that does not support the Live in Canberra campaign is the ACT Liberal Party, once again.
This campaign is a best practice model of a community standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to tackle one of the most significant problems—in the view of the business community of the ACT, the most significant problem that the business sector in the ACT faces. The Live in Canberra team from the Chief Minister’s Department has just returned from the Country Week Sea and Tree Change Expo in Sydney, and have received some strong and particularly positive leads from people who attended that expo.
In the next two months, the Live in Canberra team will target interstate visitors to Floriade. We have taken out a six-week “back of bus” advertising campaign in south-west Sydney. Importantly, the Live in Canberra team, in conjunction with the skilled and business migration group within Business ACT, will be travelling to South Africa in a couple of weeks time to attend the Opportunities Skilled Migration Expo in South Africa—one of the largest migration expos.
The point can usefully be repeated that our interest in attending the expo is to inform those South Africans who attend that expo about opportunities available in Canberra. It is a fact that South Africa is now the fourth most significant home of migrants to Australia. The majority, however, settle in Perth. Our intention in going to South Africa is very much to encourage those South Africans who will be looking to migrate to Australia to consider Canberra over the more traditional destination of Perth. To that extent, we are competing with Perth.
Mr Barr: We’ve got a better rugby team, too.
MR STANHOPE: Of course, the great selling point, I hope, in South Africa is the rugby team here.
MS MacDONALD: I ask a supplementary question. Chief Minister, are you able to quantify the successes of the program and the benefit to the ACT economy?
MR STANHOPE: In relation to the Live in Canberra program there is some difficulty in quantifying its success. It is a broad-based advertising campaign and, at one level, there will be people affected by the campaign who choose to move and settle in Canberra of whom we would never be aware. But we can assess its
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