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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2073 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

this half-baked scheme of having a community planning adviser. Exactly what is this person meant to do? Are they meant to be advising the community about planning issues? Are they meant to be imparting their planning expertise or are they meant to be imparting some sort of procedural knowledge to the community about how the planning system operates and how the community can best engage in that process?

It seems to me that on either count most people in the community would expect that to be the role of a planning authority. That is why we have a planning authority. We have one to protect the public interest, to recognise public concerns, to take those into account in planning decisions and to bring recommendations, where appropriate, to the executive or the Assembly. Surely that is the role of a planning authority. Surely that was the whole purpose of having a planning authority when self-government was established in the late 1980s and the Commonwealth passed a planning and land management act which actually had a requirement for an ACT planning authority. Surely that was what that authority, that instrumentality, was meant to deliver.

It is a bit of an indictment of the government's failure to recognise just how that process is meant to work that the government now tries to patch it up with a scheme for a community planning adviser, as though that will resolve the community's concerns about the flaws and, more importantly, the lack of confidence in the planning process. The community planning adviser, to the extent that that person will provide advice, will be welcome, but it is a misplaced strategy by this government and it really is an indicator of lost opportunities and loss of the ability to deliver on some of the key issues our community is raising at the moment. That is just one example of that theme that my Labor colleagues and I want to reiterate-misplaced opportunity, lost opportunity and government without the drive, the vision or the leadership to deliver on the concerns our city faces into the future.

The next point I would like to focus on relates to the initiative addressing the digital divide. Again, it is an initiative which you would have to say appears to be a worthy one. I think that all of us in this place recognise-I certainly hope that all of us do-that the challenges that we face as a society from the massive and overwhelming introduction of information technology are considerable and are fundamentally changing the way that we as a society interact. They also have the capacity to fundamentally change the shift of power, the shift of influence and the shift of ability to participate as a citizen in our community. As always, it will be those who are less privileged, who are on lower incomes and struggle to meet the everyday needs they need to meet to live, who will be at the raw end of that change, so digital divide issues are extremely important, even in a relatively affluent city like Canberra. Yes, we are relatively affluent, but we have an extraordinary number of people who still struggle to make ends meet, to live full, satisfying and productive lives.

The data provided to the government by the poverty task force only reiterates that. An extraordinary number of people are surviving on a couple of hundred dollars a fortnight in terms of disposable income, a extraordinarily small amount of money to live by, which is not a situation that any of us should feel proud of. The digital divide initiative of itself is a good initiative but, again, where exactly is it heading? The government has set aside some parcels of money over the next couple of years for digital divide issues, but it is still assessing the recommendations of the digital divide task force which was established early this year. The digital divide task force did some interesting work, but

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