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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4289 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

One thing that is very clear to me is that, when people like Mr Berry - or Labor - are going to just refuse to be part of anything, therein lies a basic problem. We do not need to redo the whole Assembly. We do not need to find a different way of electing the Chief Minister. All we need to do is try to work more cooperatively, as 17 people, and draw on the skills of those 17 people. What Mr Berry has just done today has really highlighted for me the fact that we have problems in this place. They do not need a review; they just need the 17 people here to sit down and work together a little bit more cooperatively.

The way Mr Berry has just discussed it was, I think, a misrepresentation of that whole conference. As I said, it was one of six workshops. The other workshops were called "From Vision to Reality", "Maintaining Canberra's Quality of Life", "Getting Coordinated Commitment", "Paying and Planning for the National Capital" and "Delivering Social Outcomes".

Mr Moore: Actually, it was one of nine. That was on day one. There were nine workshops altogether.

MS TUCKER: Mr Moore is correct. On day two, there were more. They were called "Innovation and Creativity" - I was moderating that one - "Growing the Australian Capital Region" and "Asserting the Identity of the National Capital". There were a number of broad issues addressed by a broad range of people. They were not all men in suits. Most of them were; but there were young people there and there were some community representatives there. Those people, in good faith, contributed to the discussion, even if it was somewhat flawed in the way that the conference was put together. Those people worked in good faith.

I think it is very insulting of Mr Berry to say that politicians should have boycotted it because it was a flawed process and/or because they had a conflict of interest somehow, as decision-makers, in being part of a discussion about the direction in which the ACT should go. It seems to me that it was perfectly appropriate that we were there. Michael Moore and I were there in the capacity of moderators. We were certainly not there, in that capacity, pushing our own views. We had the opportunity to speak at the end - as did Mr Berry - on our particular view of a vision for Canberra, which we did, although I do not remember Mr Berry actually presenting a vision at all. All he did was criticise the conference. But others of us took the trouble and took the opportunity to talk to those several hundred people about how we thought Canberra could move into the future in a way that would meet the needs of the community.

So, I just want to say that I think this was a view. If we see the background papers integrated into the final document, it will be something that is on the path towards developing a strategic plan. We have seen some very good suggestions made, within this conference and within the background papers, about where we need to go next. The social outcomes workshop certainly addressed some of the issues that I have been very concerned about, like developing good social indicators. The need for a social plan and so on has certainly come up in discussion. So, I do not think that we should be negative at all about this. I think we should accept it with its faults, acknowledge

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