Page 1796 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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look at growing prosperity for the ACT. I think next week the report of the carrying capacity inquiry will finally be released and that will talk about how we can do growth in a way that works for Canberra, that works within where we are.
That is something that we really need to think about throughout our deliberations. We do not want growth for growth’s sake. We want growth that works for the people of Canberra. We want growth that works for the environment and economy that we are in. We want jobs growth that works for us rather than relying on growth in wages from, for instance, the commonwealth government. We are all aware—and I was surprised that this was not mentioned—that the Gershon report stated that for the commonwealth, from an ICT point of view, every government department had to have plans to have IT developments outside Canberra.
The federal government, who is, of course, our biggest employer, is doing that partly just as risk avoidance but also partly because we have got a very tight labour situation in the ACT. There was recently an article about it in the Canberra Times. Markus Mannheim’s APS6 article talked about the same thing. We need to look at jobs growth that works for us, and not just at the numbers.
I do not have a problem with the BDS’s strategic imperatives except for the fact that they have left out a huge amount of things that are actually important. I think we have universal agreement that Canberra’s competitive edge is its people; it is going to be knowledge-based industries. We are never going to be big winners in the mining stakes or anything like that.
Given that we are going to be a people-based, knowledge-based economy, what do we need to make that work? I am disappointed that there was not at least a passing mention of the issue, first off, of affordable housing. What point is there in having jobs for people if they cannot afford to live here?
Recently Anglicare brought out its report on the lack of affordable rentals. This is a business issue as well as a social justice issue; it is both. If we are to have a diverse economy in the ACT, affordable housing is something that we have to address. We do not want a situation where you cannot afford to live in Canberra unless you are in the upper ranks of the public service. That is not a diverse economy. I think we are all agreed—even the government agrees—that diversification is a good idea.
The next one I am thinking of in terms of a business environment is transportation, and partly transport to Canberra. If we can get the high speed rail linking Canberra to Sydney and Melbourne, that will be an incredible step forward from a business point of view. It is not just about that; it is also about transport within Canberra. It used to be that everyone would say that Canberra had no transport hassles. You could always get there quickly, wherever it was. That is not the case anymore. If we are to keep our competitive edge from a people point of view, we have to make transport in Canberra work.
Training and skills is another big area. I mentioned before that the federal government has an active policy of moving ICT jobs outside Canberra. That is because there are not enough competent ICT people in Canberra, unfortunately. There are lots of other
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