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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3929 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

taking steps forward. Without calculated risk, no government can achieve the sorts of ends that the community expects, and that is real leadership and taking the economy and society forward.

We also decided in those early days that the sorts of industries we wanted were the clean, green industries, the sorts of industries that would create the jobs we wanted for our children - information technology, advanced technology, research and development, tourism and retail. We wanted those sorts of jobs. We wanted jobs in the wine industry, jobs that were sustainable but did not pollute our environment. We wanted jobs that fitted in with Canberra as one of the great cities, the great planned cities, with the best environment in the world.

Mr Speaker, we have now got very close to 800 IT companies in this city. They are not just any old IT companies. They are companies that are performing better than any other IT industry in Australia. They are companies whose profitability is significantly better than that of the average IT companies around Australia, so they are growing, they are growing fast and they are employing.

During those days it was tough putting a budget together, and I am sure many remember that. It was tough because we had an operating loss, because we did have to cut expenditure, but I think we took some very sensible and, again, very courageous decisions. We decided that, no matter what, we would not cut education spending. I have to say that Mr Moore helped there, too. But it was a decision that cabinet made and would have made regardless of Mr Moore's position. We decided we would not cut education spending because we had to plan for the future and because if we were to have information technology companies growing in this city, if we were to become a little silicon valley in Australia, we were going to have to have a well - trained workforce.

So even when we were pulling back quite significantly on the reins of the budget, education funding went up every year. In fact, education funding increases exceeded the CPI every single year. Also, during those times we took some very good strategic decisions with regard to education. As members will know, we were the first government in Australia to ensure that all of our full - time teachers had computers and training. These were not just computers that we lobbed on their desks. They were computers that are renewed every three years and that are backed up by sensible training.

We also decided to take what I suppose was a pretty unusual approach by offering teachers quite significant pay increases in return for significant steps towards extra professionalism by way of regular assessment of teachers' professional capacity. We did that without any industrial action and I think Mr Stefaniak should be very proud of that. I am very pleased that Mr Moore has taken the same approach just this week with regard to nurses. That runs absolutely counter to the approach that has been taken in just about every other state in Australia, particularly in New South Wales where the level of industrial action amongst nurses and teachers has been quite remarkable. We have taken a proactive approach, an approach I believe that has been in the best interests of the community generally.

Mr Speaker, there is no doubt that we are a Liberal government, but we did not take a conservative approach when it came to social policy - areas such as drug law reform, sensible laws with regard to the sex industry, laws with regard to same - sex couples,

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