Page 1728 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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that the federal government has indeed reneged on funding certainty on the funding growth for the independent and Catholic schools. That is an absolute shame, and it should be a shame for those opposite as well.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (12.09): I think it would be remiss of me as the shadow minister for small business not to say a couple of words about yesterday’s budget. We all got the history lesson of what happened in the early 1990s or the mid-1990s when Hawke and Keating and then Howard made similar decisions on the federal public service based here in the ACT and the impact that had on the ACT economy. It was, as history shows us, the private sector that led the charge, carried the ACT economy through those tough, dark days and made the ACT economy all the better for it in the long run. Again, though, we are here, and we have got this tough situation where the commonwealth is making cuts that are in many ways very detrimental to the territory’s economy, and I think there is a unanimous vision or view as to what impact these changes are going to make.
But an interesting titbit that has just come across my inbox, which I thought was fairly appropriate to speak about today, has been the launch of the entrepreneurial index. The entrepreneurial index is a tool for jurisdictions to review their policies, with the aim of enabling entrepreneurship. It assesses government policies in terms of whether or not they encourage or diminish the capacity for an individual to be self-employed and hence enable entrepreneurship. The foundation of this is not a new one. Since the 1930s, economists have subscribed to the general theory that economic development occurs through innovation, and innovation is the result of business activity.
This entrepreneurial index rates jurisdictions over Australia, New Zealand and Canada against each other—similar Westminster-based parliaments, similar evolution of the economies—and it is interesting to see where the ACT actually places. The index rates a jurisdiction out of 100 on a percentage basis, and there are some very interesting results. Alberta in Canada has a 74.9 per cent rating. It is one of the top jurisdictions. There are a couple over 75. Australia starts the ranking with Queensland, which is up there at 60 per cent, and New South Wales, which is at 65.7 per cent. But when you go searching for the ACT, we are the only jurisdiction to be below 60 per cent. In fact, we are the lowest jurisdiction when it comes to self-employment and entrepreneurship as a result of government policies.
Yesterday’s budget, I think, is no different, and Mr Smyth has already touched on the $150,000 that was in there to help public servants transition into the private sector. That $150,000, even if it is only 2,000 job cuts next year, equates to about $60 per head. I think although the vision is there, the lip service is there, the rhetoric is most definitely there, the actual evidence in the budget papers, the money, the funds, the support that is required to drive the private sector in the ACT into the future is simply not there.
Confidence is the number one thing that will drive the ACT economy through the future, and we have had, year upon year, budget after budget, this government talking down the ACT economy, talking down what may happen should there be a change at the federal level. They have had their hands on the levers for many years. They have had the opportunity to insulate the ACT economy against these changes. They have
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