Page 2170 - Week 06 - Monday, 11 May 2009
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review, is the time for a mature conversation on those outstanding issues. I imagine that the conference that begins this evening, and which is hosted by you, Mr Speaker, may touch upon some of these.
I alluded earlier to the distinctiveness of our hybrid Assembly—a city state like no other in the nation. This reality has both imposed constraints and conferred opportunities on successive Assemblies. The range of our responsibilities, colliding with our modest size, has created challenges, but has also enforced an intimacy with the reality of the lives of the Canberrans that we serve. Each fortnight we have a reminder of this, during Chief Minister talkback—a reminder that sometimes what matters most, agitates most and affects the quality of life of an individual most is the cracked footpath, the aggravating neighbour, the overhanging tree, the obscured stop sign.
Each day in this Assembly is a reality check of this kind. Yet each day is also a new opportunity to make lasting change—change that will outlast the repaired pothole, change that will outlast this government and future ones, change for the betterment of our community, change for the better. That is true not just for those who put themselves forward each four years in the hope of serving the electorate but for every one of the fine public servants who find reward and recompense in seeing their work make a material difference in the life of others.
A major strength of our system has always been the strength of our public service. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the excellence and dedication shown by those in all agencies of the ACT public service, which shares its own 20th birthday with that of the Assembly.
There is a temptation on occasions such as this to dwell on the past—to raise an eyebrow again at metre-long ballot papers, parties with preposterous names, the more colourful days and characters, and the stoushes. Adversarial politics, it seems, pits not just politician against politician, but the body politic itself against the self-styled observers of the press, the letters page and radio talkback. But days such as these are also times for looking forward, for imagining who we might choose to be, as a collective, at what we must choose to become, as a community, and how we might creatively meet the big challenges of the future: climate change, our ageing population, water security, the need to remain a knowledge-based community and the insatiability of demand on our health system.
We are not alone in our challenges, nor do we have to feel as though we must tackle them alone. But tackle them we must, and not by looking backwards but by looking forward. Canberrans have shown themselves willing to gaze forward, over the past 20 years. They are proud of this city’s history and its ceremonial status as the nation’s capital. But they see it also as home, and as a place where ordinary folk can make an extraordinary contribution.
Our responsibility, in this Seventh Assembly, as it was the responsibility of those that preceded us, is to allow our community to fulfil its potential, to create a place where great things happen and great and fulfilled lives are led. I commend this motion to the Assembly.
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