Page 1600 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 31 March 2009
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that still languishes because of the inability of this government to understand the importance of tourism to this city. I go to recommendation 30 in the economic white paper:
The government has commenced the procurement process for the development or redevelopment and operation of convention exhibition facilities in the ACT.
That was December 2003. The commitment to a new convention centre was made in December 2001 at the tourism awards, and Mr Quinlan said they would announce what they would do in December 2002. We are now just past December 2008 and we are still none the wiser about what the government would like to do.
So we have put ideas forward. We have more ideas to put forward. We will put ideas forward, but we offered you that opportunity and you turned us down. So do not sit here and say we have not spoken and we have not said what we would do, because we understand the importance of diversifying the ACT economic base to reduce the impact of the downturns that do come, and in this case the downturn that has come will be exacerbated by the polices of the Stanhope-Gallagher government.
We know from the ABS statistics that the amount of private sector employment in the ACT under Jon Stanhope and Katy Gallagher has declined. It was 60 per cent in the private sector when they came to office; it is less than 55 per cent now. It has declined, and with that opportunities have declined, opportunities like commercialising some of the initiatives out of the ANU that went to South Australia and then overseas. It is about assisting start-up firms that want to be in the ACT, like Spark Solar, that get no assistance from this government. The government said, “We will have to develop a policy program to assist you,” because in 2006 they abandoned all industry assistance in the ACT, and we are going to reap a dreadful outcome from that.
What we have is a government that has failed to diversify the ACT economy and, as quite well enunciated by Mr Doszpot, a government that has failed on tax reform. The only statement that exists on its tax policy is from Ted Quinlan, which is squeeze them till they bleed, but not until they die.
So they have failed on diversifying the economy; they have failed on tax reform. All their taxes are property based; they simply squeeze that sector further and further. They have failed with budgetary policy, because they had an economic boom which they did not take the opportunity to use. They budgeted for deficits in the best of years, and we are now failing at the worst of times because of the inadequacies of this government. (Time expired.)
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (3.54): I thank Mr Doszpot for bringing this matter forward. I think the dismissive way in which the Treasurer deals with this is perhaps indicative of her approach to the seriousness of this issue and to her approach to the job of Treasury itself. We have seen, in fact, her early comments on what actually goes on in the framing of the budget. Of course, that caused many of us in the community concern; it certainly caused many in the business community concern—the apparent guesswork, according to Ms Gallagher, that goes into framing budgets in the ACT.
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