Page 1743 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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(2) acknowledges the massive provision for accelerated land releases in the 2010-11 ACT budget, which will allow for the release of a record 17 000 dwelling sites over the next four years.
Mr Speaker, it is with a great sense of pride that I rise today to speak on the motion standing in my name. Members of this place will be well aware that in the latest State of the states report issued by CommSec Economics, the research arm of the Commonwealth Bank, the ACT was ranked as the number one economy in the nation.
So what was it that led Craig James, CommSec’s chief economist, to come to the conclusion that the ACT has the nation’s best economy? To find that answer we need only to go to the summary provided by Mr James in this report where he says:
The Australian Capital Territory now clearly occupies the position as best performing economy in the nation.
In the previous survey conducted in January, the ACT and Western Australia were jointly on top, but in the latest report the ACT has leapfrogged WA and now is in the number one position. According to Mr James, this has resulted from solid housing and broader construction activity in the ACT which is driving economic growth and keeping unemployment at historically low levels.
In the December quarter, the ACT’s economic output was 28 per cent above the territory’s decade average level of output, and I am sure that all those opposite would agree that this is an outstanding achievement. However, Mr James goes even further and says that not only is the ACT’s economic activity above long-term averages but that the territory’s annual growth of 6.9 per cent is the fastest in the nation.
So what else can we learn about the ACT’s economy from CommSec’s State of the states report? Perhaps we should turn to the level of investment in equipment. Craig James tells us that in this area the ACT has been performing well and has been:
… super-strong over the past two years. In fact equipment spending in trend terms in the December quarter was at record levels, more than double the decade average.
Just in case those opposite did not quite get that last point—and I see there are very few of them paying attention, as usual when we talk about good news from the government—let me repeat what Craig James, the chief economist for CommSec, said about investment spending in the ACT:
… super-strong over the past two years. In fact equipment spending in trend terms in the December quarter was at record levels, more than double the decade average.
Just to put this into some context, this investment in equipment in the December quarter was up 76 per cent on investment a year ago and it is even starker when compared to that of the jurisdiction which came in second in the investment category. That state happened to be New South Wales, which had an annual growth of
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