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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2843 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

UNESCO has a series of management of social transformation, or MOST, programs in Europe that directly address this issue. They argue that cities are arenas of social transformation, and so a key feature of social sustainability lies in a participative role for all citizens. At the heart of this approach lies a commitment to democratic governance, to innovation and to community-based collaboration. In other words, it is a process that we are aiming for, not a steady state. And you don't get social sustainability if people are excluded, if those of us at the margins are not a part of the decisions that affect us, if government and community are not fundamentally committed to this project.

The Office of Sustainability then is going to have to have an impact across the whole of government. Given that, I would hope to see it represented by more than the idea of a framework in next year's budget papers. It has to infect the whole way of thinking. This government's plan to create a social plan is a case in point. The idea of addressing the social infrastructure, housing and access and equity needs of the community is clearly a good one. If it all gets pulled together it would set quite a lot of the priorities for community services and infrastructure.

The challenge, however, lies in sharing ownership of the plan right from the start, because without a respectful participatory process it will not be built on the right information. I will use the framing and establishment of the alcohol and other drugs taskforce as an example. In fact, this project, which is being run by the department of health, was put forward in response to the call for a community-based task force to look at the problematic use of substances. Government clearly saw this community interest as an opportunity to coordinate or refocus the delivery of a number of drug and alcohol services. And so the department has selected a number of key workers in the government and community sector and drawn them together to make a few decisions.

There was no negotiation with those members of the community sector who had argued for the task group in the first place on the terms of reference for this government committee; nor even on its membership. Government believed it knew best. You probably thought that your decision was appropriate. A paternalistic or bureaucratic approach to policy development, to community planning and to resource allocation is no way to devise a social plan that will be embraced by community and the wider population. Social sustainability needs a bit more trust than that.

The economic white paper is also some cause for concern-not that we don't need it, but that it may take two years to develop leads one to imagine it may be merely being created as a platform for the next election.

On the issue of sustainability and the economic white paper, the Estimates Committee report makes the interesting comment that when "sectors within the ACT's economy have the potential for development, the sustainability of those sectors would have been considered". I think we need to take a broader view. Surely we would want to develop industries which, for example, add to our social and ecological sustainability and, indeed, contribute to the sustainability of the wider world that we hope to trade with as well.

The ACTCOSS employment task group submission to the white paper is pertinent here. It argues that the ACT government has enthusiastically invested in high tech communication and IT-based business but that the people who work in that field, if not

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