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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (17 April) . . Page.. 966 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

We now have a say in what sort of community we want to have. Like all other members of the Assembly - because I had a look at your inaugural speeches as well - I, too, enjoy living in the ACT; and I, too, have chosen to live here rather than in other places in Australia where I have lived. It is indeed a lovely place, both in its built environment and in the physical environment.

The ACT, as we all know, has many advantages. It is not only the physical beauty and its size; it is also the nation's capital. It is a planned city, so we do not have the ugly urban environment which is found in many other Australian cities. You will note, of course, as we all quite proudly talk about, that the ACT continues to be in the lead in surveys on satisfaction about lifestyle and quality of life. Because of these advantages, it is easy to assume that everybody in the ACT is able to access the benefits of this community on an equitable basis. However, despite Canberra's great reputation in the rest of Australia as being a well-off, middle-class city-state, the ACT does not always deliver all services equitably to all people in the ACT community.

Yesterday I raised the horrifying youth unemployment figures. These young people are not able to get jobs and, consequently, cannot access the other benefits which flow from having a job. This is beyond the obvious economic ones. What about self-esteem? What about pride in participating actively in the community in which you live? This is difficult when one is unemployed and faces the barrage of name-calling and labelling which the unemployed, particularly young unemployed, are subject to. It is not only young people who are excluded from the job market; men over 45 can face considerable difficulties in obtaining work, and this group is not likely to find it any easier in the foreseeable future, with the threatened redundancies in the Australian Public Service.

Growing housing waiting lists and hospital waiting lists would suggest that the ACT community is not able to provide service to all members of its community equally. Older people isolated in their homes, without the provision of community services, are not likely to be interested in the unit costs of such services but must wonder about the community in which they are living. Do we expect them to compete for such services? The discussions going on within government and within the community at the moment to address these issues do not appear to be focusing on the solutions but appear, instead, to be focusing on competition. With the use of the jargon of economic rationalists, this would appear to reduce all human activity into unit costs, with quantifiable outcomes. Where is the humanity in this discussion? Where is the community in which people provide mutual support - a concept which does not fit onto a balance sheet? The focus on the bottom line denies the uniqueness of people and their situations and fails to foster "community".

Obviously, the discussion on competition policy is not limited only to the ACT. This is a joint Commonwealth-State initiative. We need to look only at Victoria to see how these policies look when they are in place. Competition policy is not a policy as such that I can support in its current manifestations; but it continues to dominate the debate, with unit costs of services and quantifiable outcomes being the measure of success.

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