Page 3581 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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Mr De Domenico: Did they pinch our platform?
MRS CARNELL: Yes. These are concepts full of merit. I can see Mr Berry blanching over there. Some of the left-leaning members of the Government may not be quite so positive about them, but they are straight out of the vision for prosperity, Mr Berry, and something that we obviously support. There is also much to commend in the study about our preferred future and, Madam Speaker, there is much to do. Future governments, be they Liberal or Labor, must plan in the longer term if we are to achieve the prosperity and quality of lifestyle that this report forecasts.
Unfortunately, up to this stage anyway, this Government has shown little propensity to plan ahead. The Follett Government has not even shown the capacity to plan until next year, let alone next century. Need I mention the ubiquitous Berry health budgets, those famous documents full of rubbery figures which, every year, have different targets, changing bases and goal posts that continue to change? He cannot even come up with an appropriate framework for this year, let alone next year. In the Estimates Committee we found that he did not know where he was going to find the $3m savings this year, let alone what is going to happen in the year 2020.
I found it really interesting, Madam Speaker, that this vision for the future, this vision for prosperity, suggests that in 27 years' time we are going to spend 50 per cent of our health budget on health promotion and maintenance. That is very interesting. That means, I think, that Mr Berry has to increase expenditure by about 5,000 per cent, Madam Speaker. In fact the amount of money we have been spending on health promotion has not gone up for so long that obviously there are going to have to be some huge turnabouts. You can assume that that will happen only on the basis of a change of government.
We also have found out, and I am sure that our meat producers will be very happy to know, that 40 per cent of people will be vegetarians and there will not be too much eating - - -
Mr Lamont: Mr Berry is leading the way again.
MRS CARNELL: Or Mr Stevenson. Again I say, Madam Speaker, a vision is one thing but an achievable goal is another. The Opposition supports a workable vision that Canberrans and their governments can implement together, and a vision that we can all share. Indeed, we are planning ahead and we look forward to working with the community to make this city and this region an even better place in which to live and to work than it is now.
MR LAMONT (3.53): The process which we have gone through in arriving at this substantial report is one that this Assembly should feel proud of, having initiated it by resolution. Indeed, the Government should feel proud of having the carriage of it and, through the Chief Minister, submitting the final report to this Assembly.
Mrs Carnell, in a somewhat jocular fashion, attempted to rationalise some of the more fringe-oriented issues and band wagons she wishes to climb on to in an attempt to justify the latest round of populism that she has embarked upon, suggesting that that was what everybody was thinking of when the 2020 report
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