Page 4008 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video

(b) the promise in the ACT Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement to “Work with stakeholders to progress the Australia forum initiative to ‘investment ready’ for consortium partners”; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) table work conducted on the “investment ready” plan by the last sitting day this year;

(b) establish a Trust to oversee the development and implementation of the plan by 30 June 2014; and

For a long time now, Canberra’s business events industry has not had a facility that matches the stature and the nature of the national capital. Indeed, it is appropriate to quote from a document, Canberra: the meeting place, that has a quote from the Australia forum scoping study, which says:

In order to fulfil its role as the nation’s capital, Canberra needs a [convention] venue of the scale, security, design and character that is appropriate for hosting major meetings of international and national importance.

That is something that we do not have. And after 12 years of Labor in office, it is something that has not even started construction. For those who were not there in the first week of December 2001, Ted Quinlan stood before the Tourism Industry Council and said, “This time next year”—December 2002—“we will announce the site for the new convention centre.” Here we are at almost December 2013 and we formally have not announced the site for the new convention centre. And that is the way that Labor operates.

It was funny to hear how Ms Berry closed the debate on the last motion. Yes, we hear lots of talk. What we do not get is the delivery. Indeed, there is a lovely quote from Thomas Edison that says, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” There has certainly been a lot of hallucination in this place over the last 12 years when it comes to a new convention centre. It is time that we have the execution of the project to deliver the benefits to the community, to the people of Canberra and to the business community. Indeed, one only needs to, again, read from the Australia forum scoping study, where it says:

Additional tourism expenditure from attendees to the Australia Forum convention centre is estimated to generate up to $762m in Gross State Product for the ACT and 1,066 additional jobs over the economic life of the project.

Indeed, in the same document, on page 11 it says:

Ernst & Young research indicates that Canberra is underperforming in business events and is not taking advantage of growth opportunities. With the right convention centre infrastructure and by leveraging its national capital assets, Canberra could triple the size of its business events market and reach the same performance levels as Adelaide. As an indication of Canberra’s performance, in the ICCA—

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video