Page 487 - Week 02 - Thursday, 11 February 2021
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This budget embeds 20 years of under-resourcing the health system. This budget embeds the years of neglect of our tired and hazardous school infrastructure. And this budget embeds the same old thinking from this government of charging Canberrans more and delivering less.
My team and I will hold this government to account for the promises they made to the people of Canberra. As the alternative government, we will advocate for real and practical solutions to improve the lives of Canberrans because I, and we, want to make Canberra not just the capital in name but the capital in heart.
As a young Korean girl who migrated to Australia in 1986, I remember seeing the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, on TV and my parents telling me, “That’s Canberra, the place where important decisions for our country are made.” As a first-year uni student moving away from home for the first time in 1998, I remember starting a new life in Canberra and falling in love with this big country town, and I have been here ever since.
To me, Canberra is not just a city. To me, Canberra is not just a community. To me, Canberra is a place of hope, a place where a young migrant girl could realise her dreams. This is not just my story; it is the story of thousands of Canberrans. But Canberra is being held back and Canberrans are being held back. Canberrans no longer see this place as a city where they can achieve their dreams.
The Canberra of today is a city which has a real risk of becoming a two-tiered society, with some of our most vulnerable being left behind and forgotten. It is clear from the Treasurer’s budget this week that there is no appetite, no leadership and no vision to do anything about it. Whilst the rhetoric is repeated ad nauseam, action—or in some cases inaction—speaks louder than words. The record of outcomes—or lack of outcomes—in Canberra under this government speaks volumes.
This is no way to govern. This is not a government that has the best interests of its people at the centre. And this is not the Canberra that I want to see for the future. As the great Robert Menzies said about Canberra:
This is a matter of national importance, because more and more as people understand that this is the capital of the nation, a capital of which they may be proud, then more and more will they begin to realise instinctively that the nation is more important than any part of it and that the nation is symbolised by the capital of the nation in this place. In other words, this I think is doing a great deal to create a genuine national spirit…
A Canberra that holds the hopes and dreams for my daughter and her generation is one that should be befitting of this spirit—a place with a world-class health system where trainee doctors and nurses and medical health professionals from all over the world want to come and train here, where we are providing the pinnacle of health care to our citizens and leading the world in medical developments that put people at the centre, and where our medical professionals are respected and valued, not a health system with a record of bullying.
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