Page 3499 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 2005
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MR QUINLAN: The DA got changed. If I might allow myself to be diverted, you will get from time to time developers saying that the planning laws held them up for 18 months. The mere fact that they tried to push the envelope every time they went back to the planning authority and wanted to add a bit here and a bit there and had to go back again because they were told that they could not do it does not count; it took 18 months. How often have we seen developments where there have been changes along the way? It is always the case that you will see the government and planning orders getting the blame, but it is not always the planning laws that ought to be blamed for it. It is not the case—
Mr Smyth: George Wasson said that it was the planning laws.
Ms MacDonald: Are you friends again with George? You weren’t friends with him earlier today.
Mr Smyth: I have always been friends with George.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members! Mr Quinlan has the floor.
MR QUINLAN: It is very hard to keep one’s temper in this place. I will allow myself to be diverted again. Question time has turned into a gigglefest. Mr Smyth, you do not deserve to be leader over there. You behave like a schoolboy, you on one end and Pratt on the other. You should wear short pants, quite frankly.
Mr Smyth: Summer is coming. I will wear my shorts in summer.
MR QUINLAN: That will suit you, mate. Going back to the point, I think that much of what Mr Mulcahy has said and much of what he has based his argument on is actually turning the facts over. If it is not the case that the world at large thinks the ACT government is anti-business, a lot of what you said is arrant nonsense. As to what the government might do, the government has resurrected its skilled migration program. We have at today’s count about 80 applicants. We will be involved in expos in Dublin and London shortly. We have had meetings with the German ambassador in recent days. There is genuine interest in skilled migration to the ACT.
But it is not as simple as you are going to want to paint it, that we just put up a sign and in they will come. We have difficulties with the commonwealth in as much as they will not define the ACT as a region, so there are higher standards and requirements for skilled migration to Canberra. We are considered the same as the large metropolitan areas, whereas other major cities in Australia have regional status and the rules are relaxed. We are trying to work with the commonwealth to get ourselves defined as a region so that we can attract more people.
We have invested additional funds in VET. We have invested in the building of an innovative economy. Before we came to government, the exercises in business incentives were just a catalogue of disasters. They were flirtations with major nationals. You got stung; you got taken. There were some very dopey deals done and I would suggest that if the Liberals were in power right now we would still be doing the dopey deals under Mr Smyth.
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