Page 2273 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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business community within the ACT. Chris Peters, to his credit, is prepared to give credit where credit is due.
Of course, there is a whole range of business support programs at the macro business environmental level, and indeed at enterprise or micro level, that we continue to support. They are new, they are innovative, and they go to the issues that every business man and woman in the ACT tells me is their number one priority, and that is skills. We have innovatively, through the Employment and Skills Commission, got together a group of people second to none in the territory in expertise and vision and the capacity to provide advice to government on the opportunities that are available to deal with skills and the skills issues which we face, as does everywhere else in Australia.
Similarly, the very innovative Live in Canberra approach continues to be scorned by the Liberal Party. Despite the fact that 27 private sector organisations now annually partner the government in relation to the Live in Canberra campaign, it is still belittled and scorned by the Liberal Party at every turn. It is having great success, as are our skilled migration programs. I am particularly pleased that one of those will be pursued to South Africa in a couple of weeks time, moving on to the United Kingdom, a number of cities in the United Kingdom in October this year, to complete the very good work that has been undertaken in both China and India in recent times that had had fantastic results.
We continue with a range of programs in relation to enterprise development, export development, skills innovation, our support for venture capital, our support for organisations and institutions such as NICTA, a $20 million investment by this government in ICT and the IT industry, and we continue to collaborate with the Australian National University, the University of Canberra and all other research institutions. This is a government that is, in a very focused way, working with industry and with business to broaden the economic base and to continue this remarkable period of growth and prosperity. There is an excitement within the business sector within the ACT that has never existed before. Go out and ask them.
For the Liberal Party in this place to continually talk down the ACT economy, to continually talk down business, to continually talk down opportunities and capacity here, does this town no favours. There is a level of excitement within the ACT business community with what this community is achieving and what this private sector is achieving that has never been there before in the history of the ACT. The constant carping, harping and talking down of the economy are no good for Canberra. The aspersions in relation to housing, housing availability and housing affordability are twisted to deny particularly the Real Estate Institute of Australia—Peter Blackshaw’s own organisation—concurrence that we have the best affordability index in Australia, acknowledging our particularly high levels of household disposable income which, according to the last advice from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, are $199 a week per person higher than average disposable incomes anywhere else in Australia.
Do not tell me that is not as a result of the business environment that exists within this town, the strength of this economy and the extent to which this government over the
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