Page 99 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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term—actions that put our finances on a sustainable footing for the first time—as well as by the proactive work we are doing right now, shoulder to shoulder with industry and the community sector:
• work that builds on the government’s plan for the territory’s economic future called capital development: towards our second century;
• a plan to make Canberra an even more appealing place to live, invest and do business;
• a plan to invest in our people, to create an even more resilient, even more highly skilled, even more capable and even more flexible workforce;
• a plan for the infrastructure that supports economic activity—and all of it done side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with the business community;
• a plan that has seen the government co-fund, with the private sector, the Lighthouse Business Innovation Centre, boost the Canberra Business Development Fund and introduce ICon, a small grants program to accelerate the commercialisation of technology-based ideas and opportunities.
We are sinking significant funds into the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility at the CSIRO and the Climate Change Adaptation Research Centre at the Australian National University to drive our existing research strengths and, through these strengths, new opportunities for commercialisation. We are helping aspiring exporters make their first inroads into global markets. And in the period ahead we will continue this strategic work and target the support.
Importantly, as a community and a government, we will also plan, in a comprehensive way never before attempted, for the future infrastructure investments that will allow the economy to grow and diversify. We have already begun, with the release of the discussion paper. Of course some of our decisions are being made for us, including the rebuild of our health infrastructure in response to modelling undertaken over the last term. We will not be finished by 2012 but we will be some of the way.
Also beginning now are the other elements of the billion dollar infrastructure program: major road upgrades, continuing improvements to public transport and the blitz in our own backyard of the shop upgrades and playgrounds, the IT upgrades, the miles of new and restored footpaths. And the final element of the billion dollar program is the $100 million of infrastructure that will allow this city to play a genuine part in combating and adapting to climate change.
It is a mark of how seriously the government takes this duty to current and future Canberrans that I have established a dedicated Department for the Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water to take carriage of the government’s ambitious climate change agenda, including the implementation of weathering the change, the government’s climate change strategy, and the delivery of the additional commitments of recent months.
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