Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4145 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

When we met at the National Capital Futures Conference, the notion of a social plan was so much stronger in the discussions and the thinking of people at that conference. Identifying social needs, identifying social concerns and identifying possible outcomes in social terms are important factors in establishing a strategic plan.

It is also important to tie this in with the work that Ms Tucker did on her legislation for the Auditor-General that passed this Assembly yesterday. That legislation looked at environmental indicators that the Auditor-General would take into account; but Ms Tucker, as part of a compromise, moved an amendment that removed the social indicators for the Auditor-General, because at this stage we still do not have social indicators detailed enough to be taken into consideration as part of a performance audit. Those are the sorts of issues that need to be worked through in the development of a subsection of the strategic plan, the social plan.

Social planning runs right across the full spectrum of planning. It does not deal with just land use planning. It is part of economic planning; it is part of health planning; it is part of environmental planning. All of these issues are interwoven to ensure that we have a healthy society. A healthy society ensures that people are empowered and that their living conditions are such that they are less likely to get sick, that they are less likely to be vulnerable to disease and that they are less likely to be vulnerable to early death. A healthy social environment also ensures that there is not a huge discrepancy between the wealthy and the poor. Many of those developing social indicators across the world at the moment are finding major problems not so much where people are very poor or reasonably poor but where they are very poor compared to other people in the same society. In other words, their reasonable expectations are not met. That happens where there are huge discrepancies between the wealthy and the poor.

It concerns me that that is the path Australia is going down at the moment under the ultra-conservative Government of John Howard. John Howard makes Malcolm Fraser look dripping wet. I find this most extraordinary. Under this style of government a sectional group - those who are already well off - are particularly well looked after, and those who are not well off are looked after very badly. I think that is becoming more and more obvious to more and more Australians. From that point of view, I hope that it is a very short-lived government.

It seems to me that in the ACT we can apply some of those lessons from these social indicators and try to play our role within the way we fit within the Federal Government, to ensure that our social planning does provide, in a full range of ways, for people to have appropriate opportunities. That applies particularly to education, health, transport and other areas that affect the way people live their lives and enjoy their leisure time.

This is a very important matter of public importance. It having been raised at the end of the Third Assembly, all of us, those people here who are re-elected and other people who are elected to this Assembly after February, should try to deal with social planning as part of an integrated planning system through the Fourth Assembly.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: The discussion is now concluded.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .