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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4876 ..

MS McRAE (8.49): "Attractive", "safe" and "efficient" are actually achievable under the Territory Plan. "Healthy" is not. We can get into a quarrel about what words do and do not mean. I do not see that you can achieve ecological sustainability or health by what we are looking at today. "Attractive", "safe" and "efficient" you can. That is why I am not prepared to agree to Ms Horodny's words. I am not writing them off as silly. I think there is great merit in worrying about how we get ecological sustainability and health into our community, and I think it is appropriate that the Government support these words, because they put them in their so-called strategic plan and obviously are looking to move that way; but I would like to see how anybody could cope with actually being challenged on whether this has delivered health or not. I would like to take someone to court on the ground that they have not delivered health under the provisions of this particular paragraph.

These words seem inappropriate to the nature of the sort of activity that we are describing in this clause. I can understand the motive of the Government and the Independents, but I have a deeper problem than may have been apparent from my initial comments, which may have sounded a bit glib. If we are moving down this path, there might be a case for adding "socially just", words about a more even spread of government facilities and a whole lot of other things the Labor Party finds attractive and important and wants to load onto this.

It is in that context that I am rejecting the use of these words. Every time we rewrite this we can probably add more adjectives which may be helpful in the long run in explaining what sort of society we want but which are not actually capable of achievement. I want to correct any idea that I was simply being glib about this. We will not support the amendment, but that is not to say that we do not support the notion that government planning should provide ecological sustainability or a healthier community. They are very laudable goals and I hope that at some time, in the proper place, we ensure that this Government delivers on them.

MR MOORE (8.51): I think what Ms McRae has in mind is a definition of health which is about sickness and health, whereas most of us now view health in a much broader sense. Certainly, if we refer to the population health census identified in the Ottawa Charter of 1986, which I have referred to in this Assembly before today, we see that it is about empowerment and enabling. Health has a very broad concept and is actually a very important part of planning and empowering. From the long time Ms McRae has spent on the Planning Committee, I know that these are concepts that generally she is very positive about. I think that broad definition of health is entirely appropriate here.

MS HORODNY (8.52): The ESD concept was actually introduced into the Australian community by Bob Hawke. Ms McRae obviously does not know anything about that. She is not very clear at all on ESD. We keep having this debate. She seems to have a very poor understanding of what ESD is about, which is very unfortunate. If she went away and did her homework, she might know, once and for all, what this debate is about, and then we would not have to keep repeating ourselves. ESD has a very clear definition.

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