Page 2907 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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That is not a big ask. They have actually had the report since 2010. Probably by the second anniversary of getting the report we might get the plan out of the government. But they could not even agree to that, because they have in their little agenda that they will do it by April 2012. So we may eventually get a clean economy plan out of this government, but you do not get a sense of commitment to the industry, to the private sector, from this government. That is a shame, because if we are going to grow the economy, if we are actually going to have the resources the government wants to have, if you want to have more funds to use for your programs, they have to come from somewhere.
Currently we cross our fingers and hope the federal government will be kind to us. We seem to have this obsession with taxing land and we have seen that in the change of use charge debate that we have been having where extraordinary amounts of money are going to be milked out of the land industries again, but we do not have any commitment to helping the small businesses, the smart businesses, the medium businesses, the home-grown businesses in the ACT continue to develop and grow and hopefully export and make it work better for them and indeed make it work better for us. It is a shame that we do not have that.
As to tourism, there is some money for tourism. There is a blockbuster fund. I asked a question that would be reasonable to answer which was: what are the guidelines for the blockbuster funding? We could not even get the guidelines; they are being developed. So we have got some money for a project but we do not know how we are going to spend that money—but we have got the money. It is good that the money is there but you would have thought before that got through cabinet that the guidelines might have been at least somewhere where people could see them and have an idea what it was to be spent on.
The government, again, just to go back to the Enlighten report, hid behind commercial-in-confidence. The committee recommended that the government establish peer guidelines for future utilisation of the commercial-in-confidence protection. The government have agreed and that is all it says—it just says “agreed”. We have not got a time frame, we are not sure how it is going to be applied, but I am pleased they have agreed. I guess that is at least a start. It is a good start that we agree on these things.
The issue of EPIC, Madam Assistant Speaker, as you would know I have followed for some years. EPIC now apparently has a rejuvenation plan and really—
Mr Barr: You have an epic interest in it, do you not?
MR SMYTH: I did not make an epic joke but it apparently has a rejuvenation plan. After asking for four or five years whether they would finally get the block that they wanted so they could expand, they have got the block. We have asked for years for the master plan, which we have never seen but we do not have a rejuvenation plan anymore—we have now got a master plan. The recommendation was tabled in the Assembly and the government have agreed. I look forward to that and it will be interesting to know when. I get very worried when they just agree with no indication of when that might happen.
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