Page 328 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 20 February 1990
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governments can do things we are not going to go very far towards achieving social justice strategies.
The strategies that this Government, or the subsequent Follett Government, obviously will be implementing will look at the extent of poverty, a subject which has been so much mentioned today. People I talk to from out of Canberra - and that includes a good number of the politicians who inhabit the hill up the road - do not appreciate that there is a problem of poverty in Canberra. It is not widely understood outside this community. Visitors to Canberra see our good roads, they see our relatively new housing, they see that there are no obvious slums in Canberra, and they believe that there is no problem behind that impressive facade, but indeed there is. Canberra is an expensive place to live in. Heating alone in winter, as we all know, is a very major consumer of money. The cost of living in the ACT is not cheap.
We have had mention of the other aspects that are particularly significant in Canberra - for example, the high levels of youth unemployment. We have not heard today of the factor that compounds that problem, and that is that the high level of unemployment is somewhat diminished, as it is in country areas in Australia, by the forced movement of many people away from Canberra at young ages to take up employment elsewhere. The lack of an industry base is a very significant contributing factor. Ms Maher touched on the family break-up syndrome which here, as elsewhere, contributes to social disadvantage. The solutions that the Government eventually produces - and I say "eventually" because I do not expect that this is going to be done rapidly - will focus on these areas and maybe on other areas which we at the moment do not fully understand, because we have not been listening well enough and do not know what other measures need to be taken.
There is another area I want to mention that I think is too often neglected, if even understood at all; and that is the relative power that people in this community are able to exert. We do not have a just society. There are significant differences in the ability that different people have to influence the course of events. If some people are more powerful than others, then ours is not a just society. Can we say that each citizen in the ACT has the same ability to have a significant role as has every other citizen? Of course, we cannot. That is why Salvaris made such an emphasis on participation. It really is important. Therefore, again, I support the suggestion by Rosemary Follett for a community agreement. That is one effective means of ensuring that all people in the community have an equal right to express a view to influence decision making. In her speech Ms Follett said that she proposed to approach each of the party leaders in this Assembly on her proposals for a community agreement, but she ran out of time to indicate this to Mr Collaery and others. She was going to suggest to each of the party leaders that the terms of reference for the process that we
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