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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 621 ..

mental health and reduce the barriers facing people with mental health problems”. Well, this is something that has been neglected by the government, so at least they have woken up to it. Perhaps the health minister might read that dot point. “Reduce harm from alcohol and other drug use”. That is something that is core business, and has been core business for governments for decades.

Priority 5, at page 13, reads “Lead Australia in education, training and lifelong learning”. One of the goals of that priority is “Reduce inequalities in children’s first five years and improve the transition between home, early childhood settings and kindergarten”. Surely we have been working on that for years. Another goal is “Increase education participation, engagement and achievement of children and young people.” Surely that is core business. “Increase literacy and numeracy levels, particularly for students at risk”. Surely this is core business. Isn’t the government doing this now? This is hardly new.

“Improve the transition between school, further study and the workforce”. Government programs for that have been in place for years. “Provide opportunities for lifelong learning”. Educational facilities in this city have been doing that for a long, long time. So in terms of originality, in terms of commitment to making a difference, I do not believe anyone in this place can endorse this strategy.

Let us get to the real initiatives, of which there are about four or five. The first one is to establish a community inclusion fund and a community inclusion board. Well, when, how much, and what will it do? Where are the details? If this is your plan, how are you going to achieve this? At first blush, a community inclusion fund sounds like a reasonable initiative, but what is the detail behind it? There is none.

The next new initiative is action 3.2, which reads:

The Government will commission and build an ACT Veterans’ Memorial.

I do not have any problem with that at all. I think it is probably a good idea. We have in some ways as a local community been overshadowed by the fact that we have had the national war memorial, the Australian War Memorial, here since 1941 and people have made that their place of pilgrimage. But in terms of building up local community, it is a good idea. In fact, it will build on the gateway at the entrance to a local memorial at Tuggeranong. Also, Eddison Park was dedicated to the Eddison boys as a local memorial for the veterans of Woden. The ACT veterans’ memorial will be build at Legge Park in Latham, where the former homestead site of General Legge has been dedicated as a place for veterans in Belconnen. So it is a good idea but it just builds on the past.

Action 3.11 proposes that the government will institute a Canberra gold award for people who have lived in the ACT for 50 years. I think that is a great idea—well done on doing that. It will affect a few people, it is probably a feel-good thing, but how it builds our community and how it reaches some of the other targets is hard to know.

Apart from those actions, there are not really any original thoughts or initiatives in this document that would lead me to endorse it. This government wants to be able to say, “But the Assembly endorsed our strategy. They said our strategy was the good strategy.” Well, we have not been asked. It has not been put to us. We have not had a real debate. Instead, we get the standard glib Labor Party government backbencher motion to fill up a

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