Page 1104 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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cent of employment in the ACT that used to be in the private sector has reduced to 50 per cent. Yes, they have transformed employment in the ACT: they have taken it backwards.
They are very happy to go to the events, to launch the businesses, to say, “We are innovative,” but the business community is doing it in spite of this government. It took them three years, from 2001 to 2004, to come up with their first economic white paper. And give Ted Quinlan his due: even though, as he said, it was a statement of the bleeding obvious, which it was, at least it had some themes, it had some directions, and it actually had some actions. The 2008 version, from August 2008, dropped without a trace. I suspect that last year’s version will do the same.
Mr Barr talks about market reform. He says, “You can’t have industry policy any longer because industry policy is old hat.” Yet the largest component of the current economic paper that the government has is an industry package. It is a package to support NICTA. That is a fabulous thing. The largest volume of money, of funds fed into that, is going to NICTA. Sounds like, looks like, probably is an industry package. That is fine; you can have a mix of both if you want. But you stand up and say that you are some sort of reformer: “We are hands-off; we are going to make this work.” When you say, “We laugh at all those who talk about industry policies,” when your biggest single item to support business in the ACT is in fact an industry policy, you look a bit ridiculous.
Paragraph 2(b) says:
… economic development—continue to support the diversification of our private sector and create new jobs through accelerating business innovation, support business investment and foster the right business environment …
We had annual reports hearings a week or two ago. I asked them why they were not meeting their objectives. The staff in business said, “We are not aware of those numbers.” They could not even remember the midyear update, the progress report on business activity in the ACT, where they were not meeting their targets. They said, “We are falling behind because AusIndustry is throwing us so many leads that we cannot do the other work. We are working out how to deliver the other work, but we have not done it yet.”
Perhaps there will be a transformational approach taken to business in the ACT, but I do not think it bodes very well for having the transformation that they speak of when the minister says that they are getting investment-ready but they do not have an investment prospectus that is up to date and highlights what is going on in the ACT. (Time expired).
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra) (11.51), in reply: I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his compliments on my speech this morning and I note his agreement on many of its points. But I must take issue with his comments about support for business. The Liberal Party, of which Mr Hanson is a member, was founded by Robert Menzies to be the voice of a forgotten people: shopkeepers, small businesses. Clearly Mr Hanson is so disengaged with his original constituency that he simply does not understand that
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