Page 676 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 17 March 2015
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city of the future that is a preferred location for people to work, for people to live and for people to visit.
This series of actions is reflected in the latest ACT economic data, which shows that, despite the commonwealth’s public service cuts, our unemployment rate stands at 4.5 per cent, which is 1.8 percentage points below the national rate of 6.3 per cent. The ACT economy not only has managed to absorb these job cuts but has, in fact, grown total employment overall. We continue to attract people to the world’s most livable city, with 4,700 people moving to Canberra to make our city home last year. Our participation rate, at 70 per cent, is a full 5.3 percentage points higher than the national average. GSP growth has averaged 2.6 per cent since 2008, and in 2014 the economy continued to expand by 0.7 of a per cent, a very good outcome, given the ongoing commonwealth job cuts and budget restraint.
An important component of our growth has been our ability to consistently grow our service exports. Over the last five years the growth in our service exports has averaged approximately 8½ per cent per annum. We have maintained these strong results because our business development strategy targeted investment in activities that maximise opportunities to diversify our economic base.
Diversification of the economy is a microeconomic building process; it requires consistent and patient policy and well-conceived programs. Business development strategy and its implementation is, indeed, an excellent example of patient and consistent policy making. For example, we assisted the establishment of the GRIFFIN accelerator program. I was pleased to officially open the 2015 program, with two themes: servicing government, and sport and healthy activity, the latter to be run in conjunction with the University of Canberra and the Australian Institute of Sport. I understand that GRIFFIN investor mentors have already committed $300,000 to the accelerator for this year, and the number of mentors that are investing in the GRIFFIN accelerator has grown from 11 to 19. GRIFFIN expects to double the number of start-up companies working through the accelerator in 2015. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Nick McNaughton and Craig Davis and, indeed, the other mentors for the considerable effort they have put in to making the GRIFFIN accelerator program a success.
One of my main priorities in the business development strategy was to support the commonwealth’s digital economy programs and the rollout of the national broadband network. Of course, since coming to power in 2013 the Abbott government has downgraded the NBN and cut back on its support for the digital economy. The ACT government, however, remain committed to growing our digital economy. We have launched the Digital Canberra action plan and committed the government to a series of measures to build on our digital credentials. As members would be aware, the first phase of the CBR free wi-fi network has recently been launched, and the program is well underway to roll out this free wi-fi service to all of our town centres.
In addition, a series of capability building workshops for businesses has been delivered, and the STEM 4 digital business internship program, which provides for up to 75 per cent of the cost of a STEM undergraduate to work with local companies for up to three months, is now operating in the market. Local innovative companies are
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