Page 3391 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mrs Dunne: But then again, he got rolled on everything. Two beats four every time!
MR SMYTH: Then again, he got rolled as the Treasurer. It was in that disastrous budget in 2006.
Small businesses of today are the lifeblood of tomorrow’s Canberra. I do not think anybody disagrees with that. It really is an intriguing motion, and we support it in principle. It is hard not to support assisting businesses to grow in the ACT. But what we have got is yet another backflip by the government. And, yes, the chuckles are coming from Mr Barr, the man who can’t add up, and who does not know that four beats two. But what it shows is, and we always thank Ms Burch for the opportunity to show, the failure of the government.
It is worth reading some of the history of the government. It is good to go back through the Chief Minister’s Department’s reports and look at the sorts of things that the government used to do. Of course, they were continuations of what the previous Liberal government had done. Again, I say to Ms Burch: yes, I agree with you in this case; a focus on business is important, and it is good that the government continues with that Liberal Party initiative because that is the bipartisan sort of support that we need in order to promote business in the ACT.
I would like to go back to page 44 of the Chief Minister’s Department annual report for 2002-03. There, under “Support and Development—Contribute to the continued support and development of business in the ACT through the provision of targeted products and services”, there are five dot points. The fourth one reads:
Business Advisory Boards—Consultation with business continued through the three business advisory boards: the Business Canberra Board; the Knowledge Based Economy Board; and the—
get this, Ms Burch—
Small and Micro Business Advisory Council.
Yes, we used to have a Small and Micro Business Advisory Council. And it is a shame that it went because, in December 2003, when we look at the history of this matter, Ted Quinlan, to give him his due, used to get this; Jon Stanhope does not. If you continue to look at that history—
Mrs Dunne: He did want to cut them till they bled, not till they died, though.
MR SMYTH: Well, except on his taxation policy, perhaps. Mr Quinlan did understand this, and it is quite clear that he understood it. In his economic white paper, even though he said it was a statement of the bleeding obvious, and much of it was, he said that what they wanted to do, the objective, was to make Canberra unashamedly pro business. That has gone. It is not in the new document Capital development. In fact, there is nothing in the new document Capital development except motherhood statements like “we need business in the ACT”.
Action 5 in chapter 4 of the economic white paper which was released in December 2003 says that the government will establish a number of things. It says
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .