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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3424 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

a detailed, 500-page litany of failure by the Liberal Party-failure to support and failure to acknowledge the most disadvantaged in this community.

We responded to that well. We responded to it in a measured way, as we do with all the business of government. We have implemented the recommendations of the Gallop report. We created a new department of disability. We invested an additional $10.3 million in disability services.

These are concrete, hard and fast achievements. There is an additional $10.3 million invested in disability services, to address the needs of the most disadvantaged in this community. We have provided significant additional funds for respite care and mental health.

We discover, after seven years of Liberal government, that on national comparisons the ACT is 171/2 per cent worse off in per capita expenditure on mental health than any other jurisdiction in Australia. This is the commitment those opposite had to health and to people who are disadvantaged-people who have a right to full participation in this community.

We are in the process, as we promised, of completely rejigging the way planning is undertaken and looked at in this territory. It is the first major overhaul of planning. We have a determination to address the conflict and division that were a feature of the previous government's attitude to and management of planning. As much as anything, we want to overcome the division, we want to create certainty and we want to meet the aspirations of the people of Canberra in relation to this city-that is, the things that they want of this city.

If you go out and talk to the people of Canberra, they will tell you time and again what they love about Canberra, and at the heart of that is the bush capital-the cityscape, the suburban amenity, the look of the place, the feel of the place. That is why people come here; that is why they stay here; that is why they want to maintain and retain the things they love about Canberra.

The Leader of the Opposition has given us a great opportunity to detail the hundreds of other commitments that we have met, the other things that we have done and the many promises and commitments that will make a great difference to life in this community. I could go through them.

The Leader of the Opposition, if he is pressed-acknowledging and recognising this auspicious day-today will run through a list of things that he claims have gone begging. This is the extent to which the Leader of the Opposition has got his finger on the pulse; he lists as one of our major failings: "Hospital waiting lists continue to increase."

Well, they do not. The latest numbers we have are for September. There is a significant decline in September in the waiting lists. We do not use the word "why"in here, but the first sin in the Leader of the Opposition's list of sins that we have committed is: "Hospital waiting lists continue to increase."They did not; it is false. But then we are not surprised at that. They dropped.

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