Page 1794 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
What is the sterling effort in Mr Barr’s document? “We are going to have a committee to review the legislation that we put in place that nobbled business over the last 10 years. We are going to review the legislation we put in that slowed the ACT.” The funny thing is that there was such a committee in 2001. What did the government do? It got rid of that as well. We are reminded of the words of the great Spanish philosopher Santayana, who said in volume 1 of The Life of Reason in 1905:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Mr Barr either does not want to remember the past, did not know about the past or does not care about the past. He has not cared about economic development, nor have his government, over the last 11 years because we know they trashed it. They got rid of staff. They cut the programs and they did not even follow up on the opportunities that had been developed by the previous government. Just take them, rebadge them, rename them—do something with them—but do not throw them away.
The previous government had gone to India looking for opportunities. I think it took Chief Minister Jon Stanhope seven years to find India on the map: “Oh my God, look, there’s India! I have discovered India. I am going to take a trade delegation there and we will do business with the Indians.” But we had been there in 2001; we had interest from the Indian business community. But it languished for seven years.
As for opportunities in South Africa, delegations from this territory went in 1999, 2000 and 2001. Businesses, some of whom Ms Porter mentioned in her speech, actually did business with the South Africans. The Pretoria government, the Tshwane government, were quite interested in closer ties with the ACT. But of course that was abandoned by the Labor government as well. I think Mr Wood went to Cape Town in 2003 as the environment minister, 10 years after Rio, but could not be bothered looking up a single business contact or looking for opportunities for some of the wonderful firms that we have in the ACT with technology, services or an interest in sustainability and the climate, to give them an opportunity to do business in South Africa. He could not be bothered—total disdain for the business community.
With this government we have got a summary document, we have got a press release—we have got documents all over the place—but what we do not have is commitment. What we do not have is passion. What we do not have is leadership. And what we do not have is a government that will make this happen. It is interesting to read the last page of the major document. It is headed “How we will know we have succeeded” and it has a list:
a sustained lift in the rate of business formation …
We will look at that. It also says:
an increase in the nominal contribution of private sector employment in our economy and, over the medium term, an increase in the proportionate share of private sector employment;
That is after a decade of letting it slide. I am not sure if Mr Barr has seen any of these figures, but there is irony in saying that as an objective they want to increase the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video