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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (4 March) . . Page.. 459 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

We know some of the indicators of the welfare of indigenous people. The full range of health indicators show that indigenous people in the ACT suffer the same disadvantages as indigenous people around Australia. One enduring shame that Canberra suffers is that life expectancy of an Aboriginal person in the ACT is 20 to 25 years less than that of a non-indigenous person. As I have said, if I was a black Aboriginal man, I would be dead. These are some of the issues we are seeking to get to the bottom of in the work we are doing in developing a social plan.

We are doing the work. It is hard work. We are seeking to do a full analysis and study of our indigenous population, of people living in poverty. In the next day of so I hope to be able to release a significant AIHW report the Chief Minister's department commissioned on a whole range of issues around disadvantage in the ACT. It goes to the issues that are relevant in coming to a full understanding of exactly what goes on in this town-the information we do not have and the analyses we need to do but have never done.

In 13 years of self-government we have never attempted to develop a social plan. We have never attempted to develop an industry or economic strategy such as that that Mr Quinlan is pursuing through the economic white paper. We have never had one. That is why I am so intrigued by some of the comments, particularly those from Chris Peters and some of his ilk. There has never been an industry strategy in the ACT. Yet Chris Peters makes the absolutely inane comment: "Too little too late."I do not recall him once speaking through seven years of Liberal government about the fact that there was not one and there was no attempt at developing one.

Mr Smyth: We had numerous strategies all running at the same time.

MR STANHOPE: The Liberal Party's industry plan was "Feel the Power of Canberra", or it was the $10 million Impulse grant which left us with an empty heavy engineering facility at the airport that can be used for nothing but a subsidiary stadium for the Capitals. There is nothing there. We got nothing from the heavy engineering facility that your industry strategy developed with your $10 million grant to Impulse. The major expenditure on industry development in the ACT since self-government was your $10 million to Impulse-and we got zip for it. That was not an industry strategy. That was a knee-jerk response of getting the cheque book out and writing a cheque for 10 million bucks.

Mr Stefaniak: Seventeen thousand new jobs.

MR STANHOPE: Seventeen thousand new jobs through Impulse? It went phut! We got nothing out of that $10 million. Fujitsu was another Liberal Party industry strategy. What did you give Fujitsu? You refurbished half the Health building.

Ms Dundas: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not ask for an economic history lesson on the ACT. I asked about the social plan. Can the Chief Minister please refer to my question?

MR STANHOPE: The social plan is an integral part of the Canberra plan. I was talking about the Canberra plan. You have to look at them as a package. The social plan is a part of the Canberra plan. The economic white paper is a part of the Canberra plan. The spatial plan is a part of the Canberra plan. You cannot separate bits of it out.

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