Page 3399 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 19 August 2009
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private sector to deliver programs of benefit to the business community. I understand that more than 40 private sector partners have joined with government to present this inaugural business in focus month. The government looks forward to September and to delivering the fantastic program of events—events that will help position our local business community for a productive and prosperous future.
Mr Smyth began a little dissertation on the history of business and the private sector in this city. It is worth just making a few observations about his comments around the last decade or so. It is interesting to note that he presents with some great pride a view that simply by slashing the amount of public sector employment in this town the proportion of private sector employment will increase.
A more substantial claim and a more substantial contribution might be to be able to grow employment in both sectors of the economy rather than simply taking a straight transfer of jobs from the public sector into the private sector and somehow lauding this as a fantastic achievement. In other words, growth of employment in the city would be the goal. I do not think you can look back at the initial period of the Howard government and the rampant cuts that were made to the public sector at that time as any great moment of pride for the Liberal side of politics. Nonetheless, Mr Smyth is free to claim that legacy and reap all of the electoral rewards that will come from attaching himself to that Howard legacy from 1996 to 2001.
It is interesting to observe that long-run observers of Australian political history will note that the longer a government are in office, particularly at the federal level, the more likely they are to grow the public sector, to provide armies of bureaucrats to support the ever-advancing number of government programs that seem to come with longevity in office at the federal level. At the tail end of the Howard government, we saw a massive ramp-up of public sector employment in certain areas that were priorities for that government. There were undoubtedly thousands of bureaucrats employed around changes to the tax system and thousands of bureaucrats employed to implement the Work Choices agenda. If you then look at the long-run impact on public sector employment in the territory, that would perhaps explain why their proportion of public to private shifted a little back from the 60 to 40 ratio that was in place during the initial phase of the Howard government.
As I say, the goal surely should be to grow employment, not just shift employment from one sector to the other. That is why the Labor Party is the party of jobs. We are the party of employment: we always have been; we always will be. We have a very strong focus across the many portfolios in the territory government on promoting job growth. We are seeing that, be it through important stimulus measures in the school sector or through cutting planning red tape to ensure a simpler, faster and more effective planning system.
Just this week, I was very pleased with the launch of the new visitcanberra.com.au website, a fantastic new initiative to enhance our delivery of tourism services on the web and a terrific opportunity for small and micro businesses to partner with government to promote their message. I encourage members who have not seen the new website to log onto visitcanberra.com.au. It is a great new website and clearly an example of where government can partner with local industry, in this case the tourism industry, to promote this region.
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