Page 2989 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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Another matter I would like to raise is the land release program and the revenue to be raised from it. Whilst we recognise the need to provide more homes for Canberrans, as my colleague Caroline Le Couteur said, we have not even come close to achieving the fifty-fifty greenfields and urban infill development goal.
A further issue is reliance on land release as revenue, as I have said. It is very limited, and we are already significantly impacting on critically endangered ecological communities. That is why it is important to ensure that we have alternative options available to us so that we can smoothly transition to other revenue measures. They are the measures I was mentioning, with building that green economy, building those other businesses. Having been out talking to the business community, I know there is a real excitement, a real engagement, with it, because this is a well-educated town. This is a place that really does nurture innovation, and I know that there are many businesses that have recently established and that see the ACT as a great place to be and a great place to continue to do business.
We need to continue to look at what sort of incentives we can put in place, what sort of things we can do to meet their needs to ensure that we are attracting further business into the ACT and retaining those businesses. Of course, hand in hand with that, as I said during the budget week, is the importance of the skills—building those skills, teaching those skills—that are for tomorrow and tomorrow’s industries, not yesterday’s industries, and that is where we need to ensure that there is a good connection between the industries and our training institutions.
We will get to the CIT later tomorrow some time, and I note that they have got some great programs. The MBA are doing some fantastic training around sustainable building. So there is a lot we can capture. We have the ANU; we have the University of Canberra. We are very rich in our tertiary institutions, in our training institutions and so forth, so we need to ensure that there is a very good connection with industry on how we can diversify the economy and ensure that we build the skills of the people who will be employed in those businesses. These issues are the ones that I wanted to raise under this item, and the Greens will be supporting this appropriation.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (9.16): I think the health minister got offended when she was compared to Reba Meagher yesterday, and I suppose it would probably be a compliment if we were to compare her to Eric Roozendaal, because Eric Roozendaal has been able to deliver a surplus budget and tax cuts. It is extraordinary: New South Wales has —
Ms Gallagher: There are some tax cuts in this budget. Nobody has talked about them.
MR SESELJA: Yes, there are lots of tax cuts in this budget, but the New South Wales government, under the leadership of the extraordinarily talented Eric Roozendaal, has been able to deliver large tax cuts and a surplus. So, if I were to compare Ms Gallagher to Mr Roozendaal, it might be a bit unfair. It might be a bit unfair to the New South Wales government to be compared on economic management to the ACT Labor government.
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