Page 4006 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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Those opposite are very quick to paint the coalition government federally, and the Canberra Liberals locally, as the tellers of doom and gloom. But look at the ABS statistics further, measuring between June 2009 and June 2013. Bear in mind that that is before the election of the coalition government federally. They were not elected and did not come to office until September 2013, so this is purely under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. For businesses operating in June 2009 here in the ACT, there were 24,308. By June last year—June 2013—the statistical average is that only 60.3 per cent of them were still in business. That is the lowest business success rate in the country.
That is something we should be quite ashamed of here as a jurisdiction. It shows that there is much more we can be doing to support our local business sector and our local economy. It is telling us that, if the businesses are here and opening up their doors and not surviving, there is something wrong going on in the economy between them opening their doors and being required to close their doors. Those numbers are telling. They are purely under a federal Labor government and a Labor government here at the local level. There is no influence from the coalition—the Liberals, the Nationals or the Canberra Liberals—in any of that reporting period; it is purely evidence of what a Labor government will do to the business sector.
In the very brief time that I have left, I will just touch on a couple of points that Mr Rattenbury raised. He spoke about the rollout of reduced speed limits through group centres in our suburbs. I think there is support for that through a large portion of the Canberra community. Many people realise that high traffic areas need to have speed limits that are suited to the area. But simply reducing the speed limit in a group centre area environment—the same as we have had in our town centres and here in the city centre—is not going to necessarily solve the problems. I will draw the example that has been raised in this place a number of times: Gartside Street down in Erindale. Simply reducing a speed limit down there is not going to ease the congestion; it is not going to create the additional parking spaces or the additional road movements and road improvements that are needed to allow that area to function properly.
So at one point we have areas of the economy that are struggling to garner the investment, garner the innovation and have businesses set up in them, but on the other hand we have got areas such as Erindale, which is thriving and bursting at the seams, where there is a reluctance to invest further government funds into that area to address those problems, to ensure that they can continue to be a success story.
Mr Rattenbury also mentioned Bunda Street. The finished product in Bunda Street, many of us will probably agree, is going to be a nice precinct. But the detriment that that has had on businesses in their peak trading period of the year and the lack of consultation that many of them—the minister is shaking his head.
MR RATTENBURY: Yes, I am shaking my head. You’re full of it.
MR WALL: I have been and doorknocked every business along that Bunda Street precinct, and for many of them the first that they were aware—
Discussion concluded.
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