Page 4351 - Week 13 - Thursday, 11 December 2014
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Today, however, we govern in very different times. Our community must be able to rely on our health services, our children must be able to learn in our schools, and our suburbs must be livable and lovable. But the economy is no longer the backdrop to government in the ACT. For the Barr Labor government, the economy is centre stage and, as Chief Minister of the ACT, jobs for Canberra is my leading role.
The old certainty for our economy was its underpinning in a strong national economy or support from a friendly federal government. Throughout our history of self-government we have had at least one of those things. We have neither of those things today. So today, and for the period from now until at least the end of 2016, we have to work with a new certainty. Our city will confront the most testing external economic environment in 20 years—and in that environment we can only rely on ourselves.
As your Chief Minister, my job is to take on this challenge very directly. We cannot pretend that things have not changed and we cannot solve every problem the outside world throws as us. But what we can do, we will. The government I lead will take every necessary decision to maintain economic activity, to encourage new investment and, above all, to grow jobs. This is the key to all our work: from education and health to transport and planning and suburban renewal, and even service provision and problem solving on a local scale. Above all, our job is jobs.
Madam Speaker, education is always the key to a humane life for individuals and to mobility within our society. I know that from my own family’s life. My parents were part of the lucky generation whose horizons were broadened by university because Gough Whitlam cared. Today, education is critical to the future of investment and jobs in our city. Our higher education and trades training institutions are employers, they are exporters and they are investors. They simply must flourish for our city’s economy to be strong.
Young people who live here need the best training and education to compete for jobs. Young people will only come here after study if we offer the highest standards. Our adults can only stay here and retrain if they know that what we have to offer is the best. Most of all, no Canberra business can truly compete if our workforce is short of the mark. Nothing less will suffice in a modern economy marked by so much change.
As a city-state combining municipal and provincial functions, we have a big competitive advantage and a brilliant opportunity to be a leader in innovation and ideas. We attract, and we will continue to attract, leading researchers and thinkers from around the world.
Our time in government has seen fantastic developments, including the expansion in our tourism and hospitality sectors, the flowering of our IT sector and the emergence of our region as a food and wine leader. We have grown exports in professional services, which have nearly doubled in the past nine years to be worth more than $1¼ billion annually today.
Above all, Madam Speaker, we have seen the growth and diversification of our innovation industries that will drive our economy into the future. The role of the
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