Page 29 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 16 February 1993
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treatment, recreation and so on. But those problems will also open up opportunities for more economic growth, more business growth, greater educational and industrial diversity, and greater variety in our style of life and in the ways in which our community relates to communities in the region and other more distant regions.
The economy will slowly recover under a Hewson government over the next several years at the national level, and the ACT can expect to take part in that recovery, but there is a need to plan for the changes. If we do not plan for them, if we let the future take care of itself, we will miss opportunities for growth and development that will benefit our community. That means that we will lose opportunities for our children, our families and our neighbours. It is a matter of vision and, just as importantly, responsibility.
If we do not plan and act in a reasonable and rational way we will miss the opportunity for job creation, we will fail to realise our potential for economic growth and increased diversity, we will fail to reap the benefits of greater wealth, better lifestyle and quality of life, greater peace and security and a better environment. In short, we will fall short of the type of community that realises to the full its advantages and builds a better, more sustainable life. If we fail to plan, if we have no vision, we will suffer the consequences of our folly. We will have 200,000 more people without the jobs to employ them. We already need to find more than 1,000 jobs for our young people to bring down to a tolerable level the present unemployment levels suffered by 15- to 19-year-olds. We had the Chief Minister spruiking about how many jobs she has created. I did not hear her say a word about the number of people unemployed.
The first 2020 report issued by the Government recently predicts the need to create 5,000 new jobs every year. If we fail to address unemployment as a major structural problem there will be people in our community that will never know the security of full and long-term employment, and I would not wish to see the average period of unemployment remain at the current 55 weeks, either. If we do not plan our future, set ourselves goals and clearly state our vision of Canberra in the twenty-first century, we will have young people leaving the Territory to find a rewarding life elsewhere because it is not available to them in the ACT, even after the economy in the rest of Australia has picked up.
The Chief Minister's vague program for 1993, which was announced in the Canberra Times earlier this year, is no plan; nor is it any substitute for one. It deals only with existing incomplete short-term issues and ignores the major fundamental long-term difficulties that we as a community face. Our plan for 1993, our vision for achievement in this year, must deal with those fundamental needs ahead of icons such as the ACT flag, I submit. I find small comfort in the knowledge and recognition that vision for the future is needed when there is no apparent capacity in this Government to deliver it. We have never seen a vision for Canberra coming from this Labor Government or from the Labor Party.
We will have needs in health and education that will not be met if we do not begin to identify issues and opportunities and plan for the best outcome. We will need facilities of all kinds to match the increasing population and the changing expectations of that population. Where is the plan to provide the 5,000 jobs a year identified in the report on Canberra in the Year 2020? The Chief Minister has not produced one. Where will our 200,000 new people be housed? We are told about 100,000; what about the other 100,000? How will they be educated? We cannot
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