Page 3688 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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The ACT recorded sound growth in its economy and after many years of having a relatively narrow employment base depending predominantly on providing public services, the ACT started growing its private sector labour force from the mid-1980s.
This was achieved, as we are well aware, in a jurisdiction that has virtually no deposits of minerals to support a mining industry and had a very limited capacity, at least at that time, to support an extensive manufacturing sector. We all know that we will never have a large manufacturing sector here and we do not have a significantly large agricultural sector.
How it was achieved was by utilising more effectively the key resource that the ACT has available, its people. Our people are highly educated, they are clever, they are innovative and they have a good entrepreneurial spirit. Indeed, everything was evolving very well from the mid-1980s until the early years of this century when a Labor government, initially the Stanhope-Quinlan government and now the Stanhope-Gallagher government, was elected in the ACT. Ever since that point things have changed.
The analysis of major sectors of employment in the ACT show that from the period 1998-99 to 2001-02 when public sector employment comprised only 41 per cent of total employment, now the public sector share of employment has increased to almost 50 per cent of the total employment. There has been an increase of nine percentage points in public sector employment while we have had an ACT Labor government.
Unfortunately, this outcome is not surprising. Both the Chief Minister and the current Treasurer are on the public record as saying that diversifying the ACT economy is just too hard. The Chief Minister said on 8 April in this place, “We have to acknowledge that economic diversity opportunities are limited.” The Treasurer said on 6 May 2009, “The ACT will have a large government sector for a long time to come.” She went on to say that it would be unrealistic to think that the proportion would change in any significant way even with major government intervention. She said, “I cannot do it. I am not even going to try.”
Clearly both the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister and Treasurer have given up on diversifying the ACT economy. Indeed, you would have to wonder if the Treasurer even knows what she is talking about, because she also said on 6 May 2005 “Does Mr Smyth mean that having a diversified economic base would mean having a larger share of the private sector in the economy?”
If the ACT is to truly and effectively develop a stable and strong economy, to use the words in the MPI topic, we must diversify our economy. Yet both the Chief Minister and the Treasurer have already given up. Even the positive industry priorities that were spelt out by the former Treasurer, Ted Quinlan, in the economic white paper are not a good portent for the future of our economy. Of course, it is important to have a strong and stable economy. It is equally important to maintain and, I would add, enhance such an economy to make it even more secure.
I also need to make reference in this context to some of the far-reaching economic policies of the Greens, policies such as not only agreeing with the Labor Party’s
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