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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4638 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

Past page 82 we get a series of bureaucratic matters. We get a bureaucratic series of wish lists which again do not need a strategic plan. All the things listed on page 82 and onward can just happen. We do not need a blueprint to do this. We simply need the bureaucrats to get on and do what they have been doing, and, surprise, surprise, not just for the last two years but for every year since the beginning of self-government. On page 85 there is a further amazing claim in conclusion to this wonderful strategic plan - that we need an urban development program. Where was this Government two years ago in relation to the fifty-fifty plan that Mr Wood had?

Mr Humphries: We were in opposition two years ago.

MS McRAE: Oh, in opposition; and were they ever! When they came into government did they ever once put up their hands and say, "Maybe all the development in Canberra is going to have to happen in Canberra, and maybe this fifty-fifty plan had some idea."? Oh, no, no, no. Rip it to bits. Walk away from it. Do nothing. What do we find in their own strategic plan a couple of years later? Fancy. Their strategic plan says everything should happen in Canberra and we need an urban development program.

I wonder what happened to the Territory Plan, the B1 guidelines, all the things that have been discussed with the community in relation to urban development? What happens to all of that? Nothing. Someone within Urban Services is going to go away and write an urban development plan and, hey, presto, wait for it, guess what, it is going to be tabled in the Legislative Assembly. Well, we should all say a big thank you for that. Tough about the Territory Plan. Tough about all the work that has been done already. Tough about what the community expects and follows. No, no, no; we are going to get an urban development plan. Why on earth do we need a strategic plan to tell us that? Why could not the Government have just done it? Nothing in this document raises anything to do with strategy.

The issues covered on page 86, finally, are of even greater concern. There we come to the nub of it. It is the Government pleading for itself, looking for excuses, calling to close the affordability gap. It is the Government's cry of failure. There the Government completely refuses to concede that every government since the beginning of self-government has been working hard to close this affordability gap. It is not just closing the affordability gap that should drive our decisions in the ACT. This is what is so damaging about this report and why Mr Moore's analysis is so accurate. It is purely an ideological drive. It is a report that deals with none of the key issues that concern people in the ACT. My amendment calls on the Government to bring it back with a clear commitment to the agreed outcomes of this Assembly report, the 2020 report, to build on it, and to tell us their response to each of the agreed outcomes that were there, which you do not - - -

Mrs Carnell: It is not our document.

MS McRAE: Of course. So you are saying that this is a strategic plan for the future and it is going to be ditched. Here was a strategic plan that was agreed to by the Assembly and was ditched. Furthermore, and most importantly, perhaps, we should not even look at this thing until the commitment to the strategic plan for the ACT is there from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth control some of the most important parts

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