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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3933 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

system. I do not know how they will do this if this city gets bigger in terms of distances let alone energy costs. I do not know how we are going to be able to afford to continue to build schools further and further out in newer suburbs when we cannot close ones in the inner suburbs simply because this Assembly will not allow hard decisions to be made in those areas.

Yes, I am being critical but we do have to have the guts. And yes, we are a minority government and without the support of the Assembly we cannot do it. So if we keep going the way we are, we will spread further and further out. We will have to build more schools and provide longer bus routes and more services that are further away from major centres. Members of our ageing communities will be living away from their traditional places of residence and that will mean more services will have to be provided. Mr Speaker, how will we be able to afford to pay for that? I do not know.

The only way that we can continue the business growth in the city is to ensure the tax burden on businesses, and on the community generally, is not higher than it is in New South Wales. We all know that but it is a question that this Assembly has to come to grips with.

So, Mr Speaker, when you look at what we still need to achieve, from my perspective the major thing is to come to grips with what sustainability actually is. We need to look at what hard decisions need to be taken. Government cannot do this on its own. We need the support of others in this place. We need as an Assembly to stop caving in all the time to noisy minority groups. And that is really hard to do. It does not matter whether those noisy minority groups represent anybody - the fact is they know how to use the media.

This is a minority government which operates under a Hare - Clark system. But surely we have a responsibility as elected representatives to have the guts to represent the silent majority, the people who possibly do not write letters to the Canberra Times, appear regularly on news bulletins, write thousands of letters or demonstrate outside the Assembly - the people out there who are making this community actually work. That is a challenge because it has not been happening.

The other issues that I believe are really important and that we have to come to grips with are issues such as the digital divide. We hear Mr Quinlan speak regularly, as we do, about a knowledge - based society. That is all very well but we must ensure that the knowledge is available to everybody. That will require a city that is linked up. It will require a city that is at the forefront in areas of information technology, with government services and education online. Knowledge will have to be available to everyone, not just those who are wealthy enough to have computers at home or can afford to link up to broadband or whatever. This is a challenge and I know that the government is taking it very seriously. I hope that the Assembly will take it seriously, too, because it is not going to be simple or cheap to address.

We also have to ensure that as we move into this knowledge - based society we do not leave people - the older people in our society and also families - behind. We have to make sure that we have family - friendly workplaces and we have to ensure that the older people in our community have access to this brave new world. So let us make sure we do it.

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