Page 1790 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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In particular, the budget this government will announce will cut payroll tax. This will give the ACT one of Australia’s most competitive payroll tax regimes and put money back in the pockets of local businesses. The government will also create a red tape reduction task force to get rid of regulations that do not work or do not make sense, introduce new evaluation criteria for all goods and services tenders that put a weighting against whether the tenderer is a local small or medium sized enterprise and/or their involvement with local businesses, establish a government navigator program to make it easy for small and medium sized enterprises to connect with expertise inside government, and progress our commitments with the commonwealth under the business online service—known as BOS—to establish a single entry point for business interactions with government to make dealing with governments simpler and easier.
It is not just locally where we need to help out. We are reaching out beyond our borders to encourage investment here in the territory. We are going to rethink the Canberra brand. While “see yourself in Canberra” has served us well, we need to explore a more inclusive brand that represents all of what Canberra stands for. Not only are we a great tourist destination; we are also a great regional inland city, a great place to do business, a great place to study and a great place in which to invest.
Beyond the message and the outreach we will provide professional investment facilitation support by creating a dedicated function within the Economic Development Directorate to pursue investment opportunities. Innovation is the foundation of economic growth and competitiveness. The ACT government has been working hard for a number of years to position Canberra as a focal point for business innovation. We will continue to build on this effort to support those who take risks and, in doing so, create the firms and the jobs of tomorrow.
To outline just a few of our initiatives, we will expand the highly successful innovation connect program to further support early stage business innovation and assist entrepreneurs to commercialise and create value from innovations. We are providing new funds for clean technology and sustainability oriented companies and new funding for major proposals on new innovation infrastructure.
We will create the global connect program to act as a single portal for the various trade development activities supported by government. As the Chief Minister announced in February, the government will provide up to $12 million over four years for the Canberra Research Laboratory of NICTA, Australia’s information and communication technology centre of excellence. We will create the my digital city innovation prize to encourage tertiary students and all interested Canberrans in the development of new digital government services.
This Labor government also has a deep interest in social enterprise and accordingly we will provide new support initiatives in conjunction with the elected body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to start and grow their own businesses. This will build on the highly successful women and micro credit program delivered through the Lighthouse innovation and commercialisation centre.
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