Page 906 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 20 April 2021
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The budget also delivers in the business and better regulation and economic development portfolios. It reflects the government’s longstanding commitment to protect local jobs while creating new, meaningful opportunities to drive growth into the future. The ACT government is committed to supporting local businesses, talking with local businesses, reaching out, hearing from them, understanding and responding. This budget contains a number of assistance measures to do that, from the Canberra advice and support service to reductions in food business registration and dining fees to help our hospitality sector and reducing liquor licence fees to assist businesses in the recovery.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned businesses cover the full breadth of our city’s economy, from air-conditioning systems to medical equipment. The ACT government has provided $100,000 to ensure that a business advisory and connection service run by an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses is available to help numerous businesses gain access to much-needed support during the current financial year.
This budget commits an additional $2 million for the Choose CBR voucher initiative. This commitment is in addition to the $500,000 trial that ran from November to December 2020—notably, with the vouchers being able to be redeemed a bit over a week in December 2020—and saw $310,078 in vouchers expended, for a total injection of $1,940,661 into eligible businesses here in the ACT.
It was a trial. It seems that some in the opposition have conveniently forgotten exactly what a trial means. It is an opportunity to test and understand the market, to determine what works for businesses and consumers. It was the first time that we have ever done anything like this, so it made sense that we trialled it to get that feedback, to learn and to adjust. And we did get plenty of feedback. Among that, more than two-thirds of customers who participated in the Choose CBR trial said that they were more likely to shop at businesses that were participating in it.
Now we are working to make Choose CBR easier to use for both consumers and businesses, ensuring that more businesses are eligible, providing support to more businesses who need it, offering a greater range of options to consumers and extensively marketing the program to make sure that everyone who can benefit from it knows about it.
There is always more that we can do, but some of Ms Castley’s and Ms Lee’s claims are simply specious. There are 30,000 businesses in Canberra, but it was 2,000 businesses which were eligible for the Choose CBR scheme, not 30,000 like Ms Castley keeps claiming. 30,000 is the total number of businesses in the ACT, the majority of them being microbusinesses. We have been very public that it was 2,000 businesses that were eligible. The opposition know that it was 2,000 eligible businesses, yet they continue to try to lead the ACT community astray. What a start to the term.
Of course, I recognise that not everyone had heard of the trial. It was a very busy time of year, with a lot of information from all quarters. Yes, it was done quickly to
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