Page 1861 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2022

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public health outcomes. I do not know if you have seen how much it costs to run Canberra Hospital, but it is not cheap. It certainly is not cheap to build the new one. Public health is incredibly expensive and prevention is much better than cure. So if we can find a way of best using the money that we have already allocated towards programs that will, over the long term, not just utilise money already allocated in the budget currently but minimise the burden on taxpayers in terms of unnecessary and unwanted presentations in hospital for asthmatic ailments and respiratory illnesses that could be avoided by protecting our air quality, I think that is really important.

My intention here was to take a pragmatic, financially prudent approach. It was Mrs Jones who said in her valedictory the other day to remember that I was blue first, so maybe there is an ounce of economic conservatism that comes to bite when I want to pull out the chequebook that I do not have, and that makes me think, “How can we do this in the most effective way possible?”

I think this, hopefully, gets the balance right. I look forward to discussing it further with Minister Stephen-Smith and Minister Vassarotti. Most importantly, Mr Deputy Speaker, I know you will be interested in hearing this, as a keen follower of my quarterly updates in my Let’s Talk Tuggeranong newsletter. You will be pleased to see that another one of those will pop into your mailbox in coming months, hopefully with advice on the implementation and design of this new trial, where I hope to make sure that all of my constituents know how they can access the new trial and get a few more dirty, sooty chimneys out of Tuggeranong and a few more energy efficient split systems in instead. Thank you all, members, for your contributions.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Business—Better Regulation Taskforce

Ministerial statement

MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra—Assistant Minister for Economic Development, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Business and Better Regulation, Minister for Human Rights and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (4.22): I am pleased today to present Better Regulation: A report on how we are improving business regulation in the ACT. The ACT is one of the smallest, yet strongest, economies in Australia. However, just like every economy around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our local economy.

In response to the impact of the pandemic on local businesses, the ACT government established the Better Regulation Taskforce, with the aim of making it easier to start, run and grow a business in the ACT. We want to put in place the best settings for business recovery, longer term growth and regulation in the ACT. We know that the business landscape will continue to evolve as a result of the pandemic and this will require adaptive government responses, fit-for-purpose regulation and productive working relationships between government and business.

The pandemic and periods of lockdown changed consumer behaviour. It changed the ways in which businesses trade, operate and communicate. It showed how a broad range of regulation methods can be used to manage public health directions. We have


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