Page 2913 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 August 2005
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base. However, we will always depend to a significant degree on the activity of the federal government and its public service. This is, of course, an important and welcome part of the nation’s capital.
Today I and other members of the opposition will be highlighting a number of issues that will impact on the future of the social and commercial appeal for investors and residents in the ACT. These concerns have been spoken of widely in the media in the past weeks. I know from my meetings with local residents, with business people, with young families and from recent forums that these issues are of concern to many people in Canberra.
The first issue I would like to address is the growing generational divide here in Canberra and also in Australia. We continue to hear about our ageing population. In an answer to a question today, Mr Corbell said, “I can’t stop people retiring and getting older.” Well, that is absolutely true, but it is up to government to start coming up with strategies for dealing with an ageing population. In Canberra I think the key will be retaining and attracting our young people in order to avoid a significantly ageing population.
There has been much discussion in recent times about the need for aged care facilities and some of the future needs of an ageing population, and that is a debate that is going to continue. But one of the concerns I have, and I am sure many others have, is that there will be a generational divide. The generational divide I speak of is that at the moment—and statistics show this—we have a large, ageing population that controls more of the wealth than has ever been the case in the past. This could result in a real divide between rich and poor, our older and younger residents, and it is a phenomenon that has not existed in this country before.
One of my concerns and one of the matters I am flagging today is that, by dealing with this issue now, we can avoid having a significant generational divide in the future. Without overstating it, we do not want to see a position in the future where young people bringing up families in Canberra and around Australia, but particularly in Canberra, are so burdened by taxation in order to look after older residents that it becomes virtually impossible to get ahead and to own a house. If some of these issues are not addressed, all sorts of resentment and generational divide and, without overstating it, generational warfare could result. This is a concern and, as the youngest member of this Assembly, I feel it is important to speak about some of these issues for the future.
One area of interest to the Canberra community has been the size of our city, its optimum population and its future growth or otherwise. I think this is crucial to the issue that I have just raised. In May this year, with great pleasure and delight, the Chief Minister launched a report by Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute into the potential future population growth of the ACT. Despite the various opinions that abound about Mr Hamilton and his Australia Institute, it seems to me that the report already had a conclusion and just needed the detail to support it. It set out to kick not only the building and construction industry, but also to basically say that growth and development is bad and that we will be just fine if we stay exactly how we are.
I think that is unfortunate. I think it is short sighted. Growth in Canberra is going to be an important factor in our countering the negative effects of an aging population. I think if we stay where we are in growth at around the 320,000 to 330,000 people mark, it will
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