Page 3596 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993
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Right through the platform, Madam Speaker, there are references to this vision for the future. I will refer to just one of them in particular, planning. I quote:
Strategic planning should be a central function of the ACT Government.
All Government activity should be coordinated through the strategic plan in order to implement "whole of government" strategies. This strategy should set the social priorities of the community.
That is where the initiative came from. So it is with great pleasure that I rise to see the stage we are at now, Madam Speaker. I see it as a stage in developing a future for our Canberra and in getting us to look to the future, instead of, as we are wont to do on many occasions, feeling buried by some of the current difficulties. That is a natural phenomenon which all of us are susceptible to, Madam Speaker.
It was very interesting that Mr Lamont stood up earlier and talked about how Labor can be proud of what it has achieved in this area. He was under some criticism from the Liberals about that. They pushed the idea that Labor were dragged kicking and screaming into this. Whatever the case in the past, Madam Speaker, even on this issue, the point is that each of us who has participated, who has spoken, who has looked at this, can now take a hand in our vision for the future and work towards that future. I suppose that it is of some concern to me, Madam Speaker, that we have in front of us two documents. One is the Reference Group's report, "Canberra 2020 : Vision for Prosperity", and the other is really a government response to it. Perhaps that is an unfair way to present it because the Government took on the role, set up the Reference Group and pushed this issue along. It seems to me, though, that the next stage of this development is an Assembly view and a community view of this report.
Madam Speaker, I would like to take some specific examples from the report to illustrate some of the things that I find exciting about the future. I recognise what Mr Kaine was saying about considering a future where there is a republic. It is important for us to remember the tone and how this is established. It does not necessarily mean that that will happen. We are looking to the future, accepting that perhaps there are some parameters, some of which will be the case and some of which will not. In the report, Madam Speaker, there are recognitions of what is going on around us at the moment.
One of the issues I see from the Reference Group is that the Constitution include a Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights, Madam Speaker, is indeed something that many people yearn for. I do not think it provides all the answers. One of the difficulties I have with the notion of a Bill of Rights is that it actually hands a great deal of power to the judiciary. Whether we wish to achieve that or not is another question. The more simple a Bill of Rights, the easier it is to understand, the more power goes into decisions that are made in the High Court, and they invariably become more and more complicated. However, of course, there is an argument for them. That is one of the issues that I have, Madam Speaker. I take another example. On page 14 the report says:
Major gains made in the prevention of premature ageing, which until ten years ago ... was not well understood.
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