Page 685 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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MR SMYTH: I do not see where Ms Porter talks about it. Everything is rosy in the motion, minister. We will wait. We will have your economic wisdom shortly, no doubt.
Let us go to the levels per capita to see if they have changed from previous years. In 2006-07 there was 2.9 per cent growth. Then there was 1.5 per cent growth, 1.5 per cent, 1.3 per cent and 0.9 per cent. So you have this decline yet again. That is the problem.
Let us go to taxation revenue and consider the analysis of taxation revenue. I am not sure what hymn sheet Ms Porter was singing from, but it was certainly different from mine. According to my analysis, using Bureau of Statistics data from bulletin 5506.0 and state budget papers, the ACT ranked first in taxation per capita in 2009-10, the last year for which the data is available. Ranked first—the highest taxing jurisdiction in the country. In 2008-09 the ACT was first. In 2007-08 the ACT was first. In 2006-07 the ACT was first. In 2005-06 we came second to Western Australia.
When you take some of this data that Ms Porter did not mention you need to have an air of concern about what is truly going on out there all the time, in the context of world events and national events, when people are worried about the cost of living. We know that water has gone up, electricity has gone up and rates have gone up. Childcare has gone up at a tremendous rate, well beyond the CPI.
The motion talks about parties putting their policies on the table. I reckon that is a good part of this motion. Let us put our policies here on the table. Let us start with the government’s capital development program, Towards our second century, from August 2008. It is a document that is a policy disgrace. It is just a ramble through some things we have done and some things we might do. What it does point to is how bereft the government is when it comes to policy.
If I recall rightly, in April we are going to get an industry policy from the minister. We look forward to that. That was one of the announcements when Ms Gallagher took over—that we would finally get an industry policy. We have not had one. Really we have not had one since the white paper came out in December 2003. To give Ted his due, we had four themes; there were nine strategic sectors; there were 47 recommendations. There were things to do in this document. It actually did say: “This is what we have got; this is what we are good at. Let us build on that.” That is not an unreasonable strategy. But there is no strategy in the August 2008 document, and there has been nothing since.
The government commissioned a report on the clean green economy that they sat on for two or three years before it was released. Why? What was the need to sit on that report? I hope the questions will be answered by the minister.
What about one of our biggest industries, for instance—tourism? Here is the five-year strategic plan for tourism for 2009-13. It is about 30 pages. There are a lot of motherhood statements, but there is not a target. There are no objectives in it. It is not really a plan. It is a strategic plan. There is our last strategic plan for tourism, from
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