Page 1255 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 25 March 2009
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in the ACT in the December quarter 2008 was $988 million—just $5 million less than the record achieved in June 2006. I need to repeat that: in the December quarter, the level of private investment was $988 million, $5 million less than the highest quarterly level of investment ever in the ACT. Dwelling investments contributed the most to that result at 8.3 per cent.
The strength of the labour market is reflected in the total remuneration paid to employees in the ACT, another indicator of the inherent strength of the economy. In the year to December 2008, total remuneration paid to workers in the ACT was $15.1 billion, a 10.8 per cent increase from the $13.6 billion in wages paid in the ACT in 2007, and the largest percentage increase in a calendar year since 1986. Here we are, in recession, yet in the last year the level of remuneration in the ACT increased by 10.8 per cent, the highest level since 1986, to $15 billion.
An increase of more than eight per cent increase in dwelling investment—once again, close to a record private investment in dwellings—and record low unemployment are hardly signs of the doom and gloom and the recession which Mr Smyth and the Liberal Party believe have gripped the territory.
The ACT economy has shown to date remarkable resilience in the face of a global recession. We do need to work together to maintain that. We know things will get worse, and it is not going to help having the Liberal Party opposing for opposition’s sake, talking the economy down, refusing to show faith in the economy and just deliberately, grievously refusing to understand how the economy works here, its impact and its different components.
It needs to be remembered that 22 of the 30 OECD countries have reported contractions in their economies in the December quarter. Along with the $US1.4 trillion rescue package, I guess the ACT government, Jon Stanhope and Katy Gallagher are responsible for the fact, too, that 22 of the 30 OECD countries are experiencing exactly the same phenomenon as a result of the financial crisis. The Liberal Party would have us believe through this motion that it is all our fault, that it is only us, as a result of local decisions taken here, who are affected by the current situation. It would have us believe that these local decisions, locally driven, are completely and actually distinct or separate from the United States and the 22 other OECD economies that are actually in serious or significant contraction. This is a global phenomenon, and we have been caught up in it.
As Mr Peters noted, this is the fifth economic downturn in his working life. He went on to say:
… and each of those was different … But this time, the economic downturn is very different to any of the others … this time it’s global—the Global Financial Crisis—and it is without precedence in my life time.
It is not without precedence in the lifetime of Mr Smyth, it seems. This is the global context that we need to have this conversation in, and it is absolutely arrant nonsense to suggest that somehow the decisions of the ACT government have caused the recession in the ACT, a recession that is not actually here.
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