Page 4001 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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The problem for those opposite is that, for a party that talk about themselves as a friend of business, they are not talking to many businesses at the moment. If they did, they would know that the Canberra business community is recognising how much effort the territory government is putting into supporting our economy at this time. My source of evidence for this, aside from the thousands of meetings and discussions that I have had with the Canberra business community over the last three or four years in this portfolio, is the Sensis survey of Australian small business, which found that the ACT government “was clearly considered to be the most supportive state or territory government in Australia”.
That same survey found that small business confidence was rising and that support for the policies of the ACT government remained the highest of any state or territory government by a sizeable margin. I know that sort of data is unpleasant for those opposite to hear. The world is a much nicer place for them when they can sit around in their little circles nattering away and ignoring the realities of the outside world. But we are listening, we are engaging and we are responding to the challenges that are before this economy—challenges that are largely being laid down by the decisions of the federal Liberal government to cut thousands of jobs out of this city and to offer no meaningful transitional assistance.
This is the point I have made repeatedly: we have lost three per cent of our workforce, with no transitional assistance. When regions like Geelong, Newcastle, Wollongong, South Australia and parts of western Melbourne lost thousands of manufacturing jobs, there was a rush of support to provide transitional assistance to support those regional economies to make an adjustment. There has been nothing forthcoming from the federal Liberal Party. It simply confirms that the party of recession for the ACT economy is the Canberra Liberals, the Liberal Party. They are the party who have brought a significant amount of economic pain to this city. It stands in marked contrast, Madam Assistant Speaker, to the performance of the territory economy under Labor governments and our desire to invest in our people, to invest in our small businesses and to invest in our economic future.
That is what this government are about. Our key priorities are health, education, transport infrastructure and cleaning up the Mr Fluffy mess. That is what we are focused on, and that will support business growth in this city in the years ahead. That is what we need to get behind. That is what this government are promoting. It is in stark contrast to the position of the Liberal Party, which is all about cuts, cuts, cuts. (Time expired.)
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.25): The Greens agree with Mr Smyth that small business is vital to the ACT economy. I certainly agree that the ACT needs a robust and sustainable private sector which generates significant and meaningful employment in the region. I also agree with Mr Smyth on that basic premise—that we need to look at the opportunities to diversify the sectors that are operating in the ACT—because having a diversified, resilient and dynamic private sector will continue to provide a prosperous basis for our community.
Where we probably differ is on what that looks like and how we get there. For the six years now that I have been in this place I could not count the number of times I have
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