Page 3945 - Week 10 - Thursday, 28 August 2008
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to close one school over another. This is yet another failure to deliver services properly for the people of Ginninderra.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (4.28): It gives me great pleasure to speak to this MPI today as the ACT Labor government has a proud record of delivering ACT government services to the community. It is a record that I and my Labor colleagues are very happy to discuss.
The government places a high priority on service delivery, aiming to ensure all members of the Canberra community are able to access consistently high quality services. It is an important component of government business and the beneficiaries of this service delivery focus are members of the Canberra community.
The government, through the release of our second Canberra plan—Towards our second century—clearly states an objective. I would like to quote from that document:
… to ensure that services are consistently of high quality, timely, effective and cost efficient and meet the needs of the community; that the city is well maintained and its assets protected; and that members of the community are able to participate in the making of decisions that will affect them.
Mr Assistant Speaker, these are not just words. This objective is a concrete policy commitment of this Labor government that builds on eight years of quality service delivery and significant investments in these areas. As a city state, the Labor government delivers a variety of services. They range from traditional state functions to local government services.
State-type services include health care, education, planning, emergency and police services, child protection, disability care, public housing, events management, infrastructure and justice. The municipal services include urban maintenance, public transport and waste disposal.
In addition to the provision of state and municipal services, the Labor government plays an important role in regulating service delivery and safety standards in areas such as childcare, liquor licensing and workplace safety. The success of the Labor government service delivery is reflected in a multitude of achievements which have been documented in the Canberra plan, and I commend this document to all members of the Assembly. I would choose today to highlight some of the key achievements.
The first is a strong and dynamic economy. The state of our economy reflects the sound decisions made by this government to provide for such an economy. It is a strong economy which allows for the government to fund important services for the community, whether they are education, health services, community services, business services or municipal.
In the past term, household income in the ACT has risen by one-third, workforce participation rates are at record highs and unemployment is the lowest in the country. We have supported the internationalisation of our business community through trade missions to India and China and introduced a $4 million business advice and
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