Page 3016 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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There was, of course, some stinging criticism from the Treasurer when she tabled her response and, indeed, in question time during the week about the lack of information in the chapter on Treasury about matters economic. I point the Treasurer to the report. From pages 17 to 35, some 18 pages, it does cover all of her portfolio and covers it reasonably well.
It could have had a bigger section on economic matters because I actually proposed about seven or eight pages worth of additions that I would have liked to have seen in the report—prospects for the ACT economy, a fiscal strategy, a debt strategy, a response to the 2010 budget, the national accounts, budget forecasts, analysing budget outcomes, with recommendations against each of those areas. But unfortunately, of course, Ms Burch did not want those sections in the report. If Ms Gallagher wants them, I can provide her with the additional information but her colleague voted, with others, against these being included, to stop it going in the report.
It is interesting that we get the Treasurer complaining about the lack of information, the lack of analysis, in the report but her own side voted against it. The Labor member on the committee voted against it. I bet the member on the committee did not tell the Treasurer that little gem.
The attitude of the Treasurer towards the economic development of the ACT is very disappointing. Some weeks ago we had the extraordinary spectacle of the Treasurer arguing that it was not feasible for the ACT to achieve a relatively larger private sector. In the Assembly on 6 May she said:
Government administration and defence accounts for around 31 per cent of the ACT economy. It would be unrealistic to think that this proportion would change in any significant way, even with major government intervention … The ACT will have a large government sector for a long time to come.
Indeed it will, if that is the current thinking and philosophy of the government and the current thinking and philosophy of the Treasurer.
The problem is that the minister is incorrect. It has changed over time, and you only have to cast your mind back over the last decade to the ebb and flow of employment in the ACT, whether it be in the public or private sector. In 1995-96, 60 per cent of the ACT’s workforce was in the public sector. By about 2001, it was 40 per cent. The private sector had grown.
Because of the behaviour of the Stanhope government and their failure to capitalise on opportunities to expand the private sector of the ACT, it has slipped back. As the commonwealth expanded, opportunities were not taken. The last figures I saw said that the private sector had dropped to about 55 per cent and the trend was down. And that is a shame, because there are opportunities there, and the way to make it work is to do something about it, to actually have a strategy.
Give Ted Quinlan his due: when he was here, at least he had a strategy; he was blunt; he said it was a statement of the bleeding obvious. But at least it was a statement; it
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