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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3350 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

to counteract the pressures towards harmful products, resource depletion, unhealthy living conditions and environments, and bad nutrition; and to focus attention on public health issues such as pollution, occupational hazards, housing and settlements;

to respond to the health gap within and between societies, and to tackle the inequities in health produced by the rules and practices of these societies;

This is the sort of argument and the sort of understanding that undermines the arguments put up by people like Pauline Hanson when they say that we should just have an equal society. We do not want an equal society; we want a fair society. And to get a fair society you have to look at inequities between particular groups in order to resolve them; otherwise you will never get a fair society. The charter goes on:

to acknowledge people as the main health resource; to support and enable them to keep themselves, their families and friends healthy through financial and other means, and to accept the community as the essential voice in matters of its health, living conditions, and well-being;

to reorient health services and their resources towards the promotion of health; and to share power with other sectors, other disciplines and most importantly with people themselves;

I think the greatest challenge over the next few years, either for Mrs Carnell in her current role or for Mr Berry, when he is the Chief Minister and Minister for Health, will be to reorient that money towards health. It continues:

to recognise health and its maintenance as a major social investment and challenge; and to address ... our ways of living.

On many occasions in this Assembly I refer to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. So that people who read this Hansard will know what I am talking about, I seek leave to table a copy of the Ottawa Charter and to have it incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

Document incorporated at Appendix 20.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, when we saw the Public Health Bill and sought the promotion of health, it seems to me that we needed to ensure that we looked at four major areas. Many of them were taken into account in the legislation, the first being the system of cleanliness, whether it is about sewerage or the spread of disease in other ways; the second being about the environment, about living conditions and about things such as resource depletion; the third being about reducing morbidity and mortality. After all, we need to look at how we reduce sickness and death in our society, rather than being limited to other high principles about the way we live. Finally, we need to advocate, to enable and to mediate.

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