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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 5 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

and expand community services. For this reason, the maintenance of the leasehold system, I believe, is central to maintaining Canberra as a fair and equal society; for it requires development to be in the interests of all of the community, as well as the individual. Increasingly, however, the principle of leasehold in Canberra has been undermined and eroded.

Development now often takes place in the interests of a few, rather than in the interests of the Canberra community. As a result, the design of many new developments gives rise to a lower quality of life, more crowded and constrained surroundings, loss of personal privacy and space and, ultimately, a starker division between the wealthy and the poor. Moves to change the law in relation to lease renewals and plans by Liberal governments, locally and federally, to create 999-year leasehold have worked to deliberately weaken the control the community has over how our city is planned. If we lose this right to control the development of our city we ultimately lose the very nature of Canberra as a planned city for people; we would lose the opportunity to control our future economic and social development. Individual self-interest will have disregarded the interests of the community if this happens. The relentless drive for bigger profits will have overpowered community needs and the common good.

Mr Speaker, the greatest sense of insecurity felt by many in Canberra is the constant worry of finding or keeping a job. This is particularly felt by young people and by those in their forties and fifties who see little prospect of finding future employment. Here the influence of economic rationalism has had its most devastating effect. The number of people unemployed in Canberra is now above the national average and, sadly, our local economy is now in recession. Working people in Canberra no longer feel secure in their job, if they have one, and those who are out of work despair at the prospect of finding employment. The tragedy of unemployment is one of this Assembly's greatest challenges. Yet the response from governments, locally and federally, has been to abandon their central role in fostering employment and to say that another force, the market, is the solution to our unemployment problems. This is nothing less than an abrogation of the responsibilities which we in this Assembly collectively hold - to build a fairer and more just community. Canberra cannot be a fairer or more just community with unemployment.

Economic rationalism lies upon the belief that the market will resolve inconsistencies within itself. Yet we have already seen that the demands of economic rationalism leave behind those who cannot afford to keep up and foster individual self-interest ahead of community wellbeing. For this reason, we must not allow the Government to evade their responsibility by saying that is it up to the market to create jobs; and to justify the loss of Government controls, revenue and influence by saying that without this the market will not deliver. If one thing is clear in the development of Canberra it is that there is a clear relationship between the public, private and community sectors; we are a mixed economy. Over the past two years we have seen the damage caused by the abandonment of this relationship on the part of the Federal and ACT governments, and both the private sector and the public sector have worn the cost. Opportunities to create real permanent jobs exist, but they require a more interventionist and active approach from government than currently happens. They also require strength of leadership.

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