Page 4003 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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regional economy. It certainly should be part of our economic planning, with the potential for a lot of jobs in the sector. Certainly I was quite encouraged by some of the ideas and people’s vision about the possibility of creating additional jobs in the territory and additional economic opportunities through promoting food production within the ACT’s boundaries.
We need to not be unrealistic about the scale of that, but I think we can do a lot more. Government can certainly play a role in many cases simply through enabling, by the removal of barriers that have built up over time. There has never really been a significant focus on food production in the ACT. There are a lot of barriers that are there because the discussion has not been had. I am certainly looking forward to working with a range of industry players to move that forward.
We know, of course, that the construction of light rail, a well-debated topic in this place, will support many small businesses in the city and along the corridor. That goes to some interesting questions about how we do our urban planning to support small business. The Greens are certainly concerned that there is already an adequate supply of commercial zoning and that the level of retail gross floor area in this town seems to be very high per capita for retail GFA in particular, as well as supermarket GFA, compared to other cities.
If you take the GFA at the airport into account, this is a real problem for ACT retailers, in my view, and only leads to empty shops and lost jobs when businesses go broke. This, in combination with the office vacancy rate, seems to indicate that we have an adequate supply of commercial zoning generally. Unless there is clear evidence of increased need for additional commercial sites, it might be time to level off the amount of commercial zoning but focus on transport corridors, particularly for mixed use. Those areas generate a sustainable base of customers and a sustainable base of ongoing activity. Something like the light rail will generate that along the corridor, as well as the direct work that is going to go into the construction process and the other industries that will flow around the development of that project. That then allows people in those mixed-use developments to fulfil their service and shopping needs by the use of public transport, or perhaps in their local areas they are within walking or cycling distance. It is really about creating more sustainable business environments for a range of new business opportunities in the territory.
In terms of local shops, I think there is a similar point there around the need to make our local shops more viable, ideally through increasing residential development in local shopping centres for communities and businesses. That is a way of ensuring that unviable local centres are given a better lease of life and that businesses have a level of sustainability. Certainly having residential properties within that retail sector makes local shopping centres safer in the evening and provides a guaranteed customer base for businesses.
There are some significant issues with Civic. I think they are probably a discussion for another day, but I am concerned about the way we are seeing the domination of the city by one large landlord and the impact that that is having on smaller businesses in terms of the levels of rent that they need to pay. The night time economy in the ACT has not figured strongly in previous discussions about government support for small business.
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