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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 620 ..

Mr Speaker, I would again refer to the words of that young mother, Rosalind Sexton, who, when referring to the Canberra social plan, said:

It can only be a good thing.

She is right; it can only be a good thing. Now is the time to get on with the job of making it happen so that, as the plan says:

All people reach their potential, make a contribution, and share the benefits of our community.

Mr Speaker, I call on members of the Assembly to get behind this plan and give it their full support.

MR SMYTH (Leader of the Opposition) (11.07): Mr Speaker, the opposition will not be supporting the motion today simply because we do not believe that there is a strategy inherent in this document. I notice that the second point of Ms MacDonald’s motion contains the words “endorses the strategy detailed in the plan”. I would have liked to have heard a little bit more about the strategy, and this is one of the great failings of the social plan. All of the groups who were involved said, “Yes, we welcome the arrival of the thing but we want to know how it is going to be implemented, when it is going to be implemented, and how much is attached to it in terms of dollars.” The standard government answer to these questions is, “You’ll have to wait for the budget.”

So I do not believe the social plan is worth endorsing, and I will point out a number of reasons why. I think there is an alarming lack of seriousness about this document. If you go through the various things that purport to be the core of the strategy you will find that 65 actions have been identified in the Canberra social plan. The majority of those are, in fact, as the Treasurer said when talking about his white paper, statements of the bleeding obvious or core business for government. So we have got a strategy to do what we are meant to do. Well, that is a good strategy!

How you can read this strategy and have any faith or confidence in what the government will do is beyond me. Priority 4 of the plan is “Improve health and well being” and one of its goals is “Invest in children and young people”. I would have thought the government was doing that now, or it should have been. Another goal is “Meet the health needs of an ageing population”. I would have thought that was core business of a government.

Another is “Focus on prevention and early intervention throughout people’s lives”. Well, surely that is just commonsense. “Improve the good health of the Canberra population and narrow the health gap between the general community and the poor and disadvantaged”. Surely we have been working towards that for years. “Strengthening the health of the community through a whole of government approach to health issues, together with community partnerships to develop sustainable social care supports”. Apart from the Wally words, surely that is what government should have been doing anyway.

“Promote a better balance between work and family”—hardly a new concept. “Support an active lifestyle at all stages of people’s lives”—hardly a new concept. “Improve

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