Page 754 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 17 March 2015
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not only undermines the confidence of business but it undermines the efficiency of the bureaucracy.
I can point to a friend who, just in the last week, finalised an application for a food licence. He is opening a new takeaway in Fyshwick. During the process, there were several occasions when a different person would pick up the application and make a different query before the final licence could be approved. I understand that there is a statutory time limit of 10 days to make a determination on an application for a food licence, but it took some weeks just for the fit-out application to be approved before this business could go ahead and start making the fit-out to open their doors to do business in this territory, to employ people, to create opportunities.
Mr Assistant Speaker Bourke, it was probably about five minutes—six minutes if we are generous—before you started slagging off the commonwealth federal government and what you think is happening up there. Perhaps it would be timely to draw some comparisons as to what the Liberals’ record is federally compared to the record of the former Labor government.
We will start with a big headline figure that goes to why business confidence is so low in this country, and also this city. That is the budget position. In the final year of the coalition government, there was a $19.8 billion surplus. When Labor left, there was a $47 billion deficit. That money has to be repaid from somewhere. Government debt went from $55.4 billion to $310 billion. Average GDP under the coalition was 3.6 per cent; under Labor it was 2.5. We are starting to get a picture of why business confidence and the confidence of those that make the wealth, create the job opportunities and create the driving force to grow our economy are often a bit sluggish.
We can look at other areas. It is not necessarily a big one for the ACT, but let us look at manufacturing. At the end of the coalition government in November 2007, there were 1,038,800 people employed in manufacturing, contrasted to the end of the Labor government, when there were 911,000. We have got cuts in manufacturing.
Mr Barr: And how many now that the automotive industry has been shut down?
MR WALL: Why has it been shut down? It is a bit too difficult—
Mr Barr interjecting—
MR WALL: Handouts. Subsidies. That is Andrew Barr’s answer. The Treasurer’s answer is: “Subsidies. Let’s give them money. Government will fund it. Government will prop it up.” You should attract the auto industry to Canberra.
Let us look at other areas as to why businesses struggle with confidence. Let us look at your average increases in electricity prices. Between March 1996 and December 2007, the average increase in electricity was 3.1 per cent per year, contrasted to the increases under the last federal Labor government of 12.9 per cent. It is no wonder, and there is no question, that business confidence in this city is struggling.
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