Page 3587 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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We may be. We may be by the year 2000; we may be by the year 2020, or 2050. I do not know. To build into a document like this that all of these things will be happening because we are a republic, or that being a republic is fundamental to much of the thinking in it, does tend to put a question mark about it.
Like Ms Ellis, I read these documents with a certain amount of cynicism. There is much in them that I think we should accept as read, but there is much that one has to question. I was just looking at some of the headings that I think anybody would be sensible to agree with, such as "Creating a learning society". I would certainly hope that we do just that and that learning extends to all sectors of the community and not just to some. "Creating economic equity" is another heading. I would hope that we would be striving to achieve that. Another is "Reconciling Indigenous and Immigrant Australia". That is a worthy objective that I would hope we would all be working for. Others are "Looking after our Elders" and "Equity for people with disabilities". These are general propositions, general concepts, that nobody could argue about. They ought to be objectives of this society. Another heading is "Removing conflict from our culture". I talked about removing the acrimony from debates in this place. It would be a good place to start. Of course, removing conflict from our culture would be a good thing to do. We hear a lot about that today - about violence in the home and the like. Violence begets violence. I suspect that we would be better as an organisation if we were not so violent in some of the debate that takes place here. So I can subscribe to a good deal of this.
I would hope that long before the year 2020 we will have achieved a lot of the objectives spelt out here. I am sure that we will. With a government of goodwill, with an Assembly in which productive and useful debate takes place and where we spend our time constructively and not destructively, all of these things are within our reach. All are capable of attainment. I think that we should be adopting them in the generality without being specific or putting some form of priority on them. The whole government program ought to be directed towards achieving these things. I would certainly support the Government in anything that it does to set some of these concepts in concrete and to develop a program to implement them. What I am afraid of is that, like so many things that we talk about here, and so many reports that are tabled and so much work that is done by all sorts of people and all sorts of organisations, we will talk about them and that will be the end of the matter. A whole lot of energy, a lot of innovative thinking, a lot of productive work goes on, and it does not seem to lead to anything.
I have been critical of this Government very often. For instance, the Ellis report on social justice for the ageing contained 28 recommendations, if my recollection serves me correctly. I do not know that the Government has yet given any indication that it is going to put any of them into effect. When the Government comes back and responds to a report like that I would like to hear them say, "We adopt these things and here is the program by which we intend to implement them". Without that, it is meaningless. I think this is another case where many good objectives, many good statements of intent - much wishful thinking, perhaps - are set down. Not only would I like to see the Government endorsing it, as Ms Ellis has done, and other members of the Government will, no doubt; I would like to see a little bit more than that. I would like to see some evidence that as well as endorsing it they intend to do something about it. I repeat that if they do that they will have my support.
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