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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2127 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

We had the Stein inquiry, which was like the circuit-breaker in all of that. We have a whole new set of legislation and reorganisation. But the Government seems to have minimised everything to the needs of the business environment. To a certain extent, that underlies my very argument - that the whole budget seems to be about business creation. So, to that extent, we have the Planning and Land Management Group worrying about the business environment. Budget Paper No. 4 says:

This will be achieved by delivering planning and land management which enhances Canberra's unique environment, providing a dynamic and supportive business environment in working with the private sector and delivering an integrated approval system which responds to its customers' needs.

I think anybody reading that with a whole-of-government look at what on earth this Government is here for might get a little concerned. What about the community's needs? What about our social needs? What about our physical needs - the physical needs of older people, of young people, of children, of people with disabilities? Do their needs not matter anymore? Where has that objective of government gone? If government is not there to take care of the needs of people who cannot, for whatever reason, do it themselves, then who is?

It seems to me that, in these sorts of outlooks that do not somehow marry to a bigger philosophy, you find major gaps in thinking about just what these services are for. In planning, in particular, where they are focused on the detail, it seems to me almost to come bottom up: What does the officer do? Where is the contract? Where is the outcome? How do we measure it? It is quite practical in focus, because this is what accrual accounting does offer us. We build it up. So what we have in the outlook is more or less a summary of what it is that people do, but we do not have then the bigger building back into what it is that the Government is trying to achieve in totality. So we have these ad hoc bits and pieces which are a bit of a worry.

I find the preparation of a five-year urban plan a bit of a worry because, when you do get to the detail of it, it seems to be entirely focused on Civic. Yes, there are definitely physical needs that drive the redevelopment of Civic; but when we are looking at a budget, when we are looking at a plan for the ACT, one cannot help but say, "Hang on a minute. Has anybody ever looked at Belconnen? What about some urban revitalisation in that town centre? Has anybody ever looked at the problems that are in Woden? What has happened to those? Where are those things? Why is this priority there?". I think they are legitimate questions to ask, and I think the budget papers should show in some way what the priorities are, perhaps some sort of longer-term overview of what the Government is trying to achieve, and then how the detail feeds back into that.

Mr Humphries pointed out that criticism has been minimal this year by comparison. There are two reasons for that. One is that a $100m injection was found from ACTEW, which meant that a lot of the pressure was taken off a lot of the budget lines in that priorities did not have to be reorganised and cuts did not have to be made. People seem to me to have just gone on with things as they were. That did take a lot of pressure off.

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