Page 972 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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Mr Speaker, I am sure you will be pleased to learn that the government is also working directly with the ACT chapter of Family Business Australia in its endeavours locally. Through business in focus month we have been working with Family Business Australia by sponsoring a number of their events. Firstly, there is a one-day conference targeting family businesses. The conference explored making your family business grow and thrive and featured Roger La Salle as a keynote speaker. The second conference, entitled “4 love and money” explored the unique situation of family businesses as they seek business structures and solutions that suit the family as well as benefiting the business.
Home-based business is an important category of local enterprise. National estimates suggest that around one in every eight Australian homes has a business at work behind the front door. So in the streets and suburbs of Canberra we have worked to streamline many of the planning issues that impact on family businesses.
The government, through the ACT Planning and Land Authority, has a small business service charter which sets out the services and standards that small businesses in the ACT can expect and what business people can do if the standards are not met. Recognising that many small businesses in the ACT operate from home, the government has put in place a number of planning policies that are designed to foster business activity in residential areas but in ways that also protect the amenity of residential locality and in particular adjoining residences.
Another area that will benefit all businesses in the territory is our active participation in national and interjurisdictional reform through COAG. The ACT has joined with other states and territories to deregulate 27 identified priority areas, eight competition areas and implemented regulation reform. A number of these reforms significantly reduce red tape on family-owned businesses.
Let me turn now to some exciting developments that will impact on the future growth of small businesses. Rapid advances in information and communication technology have expanded the number and range of markets available to family-owned businesses. The rollout of the national broadband network across Canberra will increase the opportunities for family-owned businesses to scale up and perhaps even go global from the comfort of home.
A ubiquitous, super-fast broadband is, indeed, a game-changer for family businesses, for small businesses and for microbusiness. It is a game-changer in a way that few of us have the capacity to imagine right now, but we must. We must start opening our minds to these possibilities. The rollout in Gungahlin is the critical, important first step in that process. We already have the most computer-savvy and internet-connected society in Australia. This early exposure through the NBN is a tremendous opportunity for our businesses to move to another level.
The first two sites in Gungahlin will be in Ngunnawal and Amaroo, covering 6,000 residences. An additional 14,800 residences in Gungahlin will have high speed broadband services within the next 18 months. As I think I have mentioned before in this place, this is in fact the second-largest rollout of the national broadband network across the ACT and New South Wales.
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