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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (17 April) . . Page.. 967 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

I realise that the competition policy debate is broader than the delivery of community services, as it addresses a number of issues such as duplication and inefficiencies in the system. I was heartened yesterday by the report of the Select Committee on Competition Policy Reform. This committee appears to be cautious in its findings, and there will be considerably more debate and consultation before the Competition Policy Reform Bill is finally passed. The use of economic terminology for community activities puts all users of services, and that includes all of us, into competition with each other to maximise the access to and use of the services. This encourages individual response to community issues and problems, rather than finding a community solution.

While economic terms may dominate the discourse on community service delivery in the late 1990s, I now want to shift the discussion to the social justice principles. Social justice is not the antithesis of competition policy; it is not mutually exclusive in the development of jobs and economic development, as has been suggested in this house previously. In fact, social justice principles should continue to overlay our consideration of "community" and our working towards an inclusive and supportive community. It is interesting to observe that in some cases people feel that we should throw out social justice as though it is no longer relevant to this more hard-nosed period of the last years of the twentieth century. But can we afford to do so? Do we want to encourage a community which is devoid of humanity and compassion?

Let us consider the discussion on social justice in the ACT before self-government. I think it still has relevance to our considerations now, as we move towards the end of this century. Late in 1988, Michael Salvaris was engaged to undertake a study on the development of an ACT social justice strategy. The report was titled "Canberra: Planning for a Fair Community". This study had many suggestions and recommendations which guided the first governments following the introduction of self-government. This report recognised that social justice, with its principles of equity, equality of rights, access to essential services and participation, requires the strong and visible commitment of not only the ACT community but also the ACT's politicians and administrators. Such commitment is still relevant today. Through the leadership of all of us elected to the ACT Assembly, we should be striving to ensure that the ACT is a fair community. This is not to deny that there are limited resources which any government has to take account of when providing services that are expected by the community, but it does not mean to say that we do not look at everybody's needs.

Social justice principles should influence our deliberations and our decision-making. We should be fostering an active and participative community which is working towards an inclusive and supportive environment for all its members, and we should guard against using only the unit cost, the bottom line, as the only criterion by which we measure success. These concepts are not only theoretical; they apply to my electorate of Molonglo. It is the largest electorate. It starts in the southern part of Weston Creek - it is an area which, of course, I could recommend to anyone; it is a delightful place to live - goes through the centre of Canberra, taking in all the old suburbs, and into the new area of Gungahlin.

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