Page 3107 - Week 10 - Thursday, 18 October 2007
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and Catering NSW and ACT, the tourism industry council and the liquor, hospitality and miscellaneous workers union to see what effect it might have on people’s salaries—because these guys across the road here will say, “It will affect their salary.”
For too long, people have been able to use the strips for nothing. That is not going to happen any more. That is the regime; that is where we are going. All I can say is that it has not affected the industry one bit. The industry is exploding across town—almost every suburb, every tiny little shop. The Richardson shops have got some out the front of them, and there are only five shops in the whole place. Mr Speaker, it is not hurting the industry at all. As far as I am concerned, the Assembly can just dispense with this disallowance motion.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (11.12): Minister, I think you are a bit delusional. For the purpose of being definitive in relation to what 100 per cent is, I will give you the Narrabundah high school answer to that: 100 per cent on $21.40 is $42.80. In that respect I would have to agree with Mr Smyth. I also agree with Dr Foskey on this one. Often my colleagues do not agree with her on much, but she makes a lot of sense in what she has said there.
This is part of the ambience of Canberra. This is one of the main improvements we have seen in the local business scene—the local ambience of shopping centres—over the last 20 years. I remember the pioneering Gus Petersilka and the issues he had. Mr Hargreaves’s attitude reminds me of the days of the old NCDC, which ran Canberra with an iron rod back in the late 1950s and early 1960s and was resistant to any change.
It annoys me, too, when I see small, struggling businesses getting harassed and prosecuted even for having a chair that is over a line when those small, struggling businesses have great difficulty, when something really serious happens—like a criminal act being committed against them—and the police are unable to come because the police are overstretched. Again it is a case of you guys needing to get your priorities right.
This is a huge increase. If you were charging $21.40 three years ago, I would have thought that it would have been quite reasonable to just up that with the CPI—or even, if you had to, your new great standard of WPI. That at least would have been fair. Mr Smyth’s motion is an eminently fair one, because it would lead to the removal of a significant, unreasonable impost on business.
Canberra is not Brisbane; it is not Darwin. It is not even Sydney. It is a bit like Melbourne, although we do have four distinct seasons. Apart from Melbourne, in those other places you can sit outside quite easily for 12 months of the year. That is a bit harder in Canberra, because we have only about six months when it is warm enough to comfortably sit outside and eat a meal. I know that a lot of businesses—for example, the All Bar Nun and a number of other businesses—have put in big heaters to make it more comfortable for people outside, but in terms of maximising your benefit from outside eating, and having tables and chairs outside on the sidewalk, you are able to use the area effectively for only about six months of the year.
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