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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 634 ..

I think it is also ironic that the Chief Minister has nominated his Human Rights Act as a central element of this plan but last night refused to include the rights of education, health, housing or freedom from hunger in that Human Rights Bill.

We are yet to see any detail to back up the hype about the flagship commitments to the rights of children, and I note from reading the social plan that it seems to have been developed quite outside of the debate that is happening at the moment in relation to child protection. It seems to have been developed outside the work done by the community services committee into the rights, interests and wellbeing of children.

Again I come back to the point that it appears that this social plan has been developed in complete isolation of all the other work that has been going on in the ACT. The social plan nominates something along the lines of 50 goals, but it only includes four targets, which are buried at the back of the document. The Chief Minister has refused to attach any meaningful targets to the vast bulk of the goals. Without this, the plan has no costings or timeframes. So I cannot endorse the strategy, as Ms MacDonald would like us to do, as it is a strategy without any detail, without any costings, without any timeframes. It is a blueprint for the next 10 to 15 years, but with no implementation plan, with no strategy. Are the child and family centres to be built next year or in 2014? Are the increased concessions on electricity, water and sewerage bills for people on low incomes coming in the next budget or the budget in 2010? There is no strategy here to endorse.

So I am flagging in debate why I am seeking to move that we change it from “strategy” to “goals”. I am happy to endorse the goals that talk about reducing poverty and about meeting the health needs of an ageing population. They talk about increasing the supply of public and community housing in the territory, enhancing Canberra’s liveability, recognising the importance of the environment to the overall health of the community and promoting and supporting the role of carers. These goals are all statements of attainment that we can support, but there is no strategy contained in the social plan. How can we endorse a strategy when we do not know what that strategy is?

It appears that the social plan has been another costly exercise so that the government can give the appearance of doing something but in reality leave things for another day. We have a spatial plan, a draft social plan, a transport plan, a non-urban use plan and countless studies, and we await the launch of the Canberra plan which supposedly ties them all together. I hope that Canberra plan does involve some implementation strategies.

The aims of the social plan are noble, and some of them are even bold. But plans without ways forward become a summary of what you have but not what you need to be doing. The visions of this plan are let down by a lack of commitment to follow through and this is what condemns this plan to be nothing more than a public relations exercise. So, whilst I am happy to support the goals, I cannot support the missing strategy, and I support Ms Tucker’s amendment to remove the word “overwhelmingly” because I think we have highlighted in this debate the number of flaws and concerns that the community has with the Canberra social plan as it was tabled by the government.

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