Page 1006 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
better. And you cannot do that if you are not paying attention to the economy. Good governments manage the economy responsibly, and that good management leads to benefits for all the community. It is what underpins the delivery of the services that Canberrans want and need.
Running a surplus operating budget provides intergenerational equity. It means that each generation of the ACT community pays for the government services they are receiving. A surplus budget is vital to maintaining the territory’s AAA credit rating. A surplus budget also provides the basis for managing the risks and uncertainties that will inevitably arise in the future. That is the reason why this government has delivered successive budget surpluses totalling $250 million since coming to office.
Paul Keating said, “Leadership is not about being popular. It’s about being right, about being strong. It’s about doing what you think the nation requires.” I think that argument has more currency now than it possibly did then. Good government is about making difficult decisions in the long-term interests of the community. As a new member of this Labor government, I commit to contribute to the continuation of the sound economic management of this territory.
Good governments invest in the community, through well-managed programs of infrastructure improvements. We need to be investing in our schools, roads, hospitals, footpaths and housing—in short, investing in our community’s future. But we need to be innovative in the way we make government work.
We need to find and maintain the right balance between the provision of municipal services and the state responsibilities we have. We need to accept the economic and societal challenges that face us in the coming decades. Those people who think that this city should function as it did 30 years ago, and never change, should realise that this city is different now, the challenges are different, and the funding is different. Canberra today has a thriving private sector employment base. The “education industries” are major drivers of economic growth—anyone who views this city solely through the prism of the parliamentary triangle is missing the real story.
Mr Speaker, good governments provide high quality education and health systems for their communities. I am proudly a product of the ACT education system; I was taught here in public schools. I believe that every child deserves a quality education—regardless of their background.
Our school system is operating under considerable pressure from changing demographics and community expectations. Across Australia there has been a movement of students away from the public school system, and the ACT is not immune to this. There are now nearly 18,000 empty desks across the ACT public school system. Keeping surplus capacity at such levels is not only costly but also proving increasingly difficult to maintain the highest standards of educational facilities and services in all 95 schools.
We face serious challenges in achieving equity across the public school system. Providing the latest teaching and learning technology for all students is not cheap. High quality teaching and learning are only possible in a properly resourced educational environment. Our education system needs teachers who are professionally supported,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .