Page 4890 - Week 11 - Thursday, 21 October 2010
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efforts and greater energies elsewhere. And, as always, we have delivered on our commitments in a manner that is fiscally prudent, carefully targeted and evidence based.
We have managed to deliver capital works programs on a scale that no previous ACT government has been able to dream of, let alone achieve, and we have done it year after year, including in the first years of this term in the midst of a global downturn. We have not just protected jobs; we have created them. We have kept faith with the people of Canberra on the issues they tell us matter most to them day to day—health, education and economic and physical security. We have kept faith with Canberrans of the future by delivering on our commitments in relation to climate change, water and affordable housing.
Because we are a party and a government that believe in the core Labor values of equality and opportunity, we have also delivered on our commitments to those Canberrans most vulnerable to being left behind or marginalised—the elderly, the very young, those living with disabilities and those who devote long decades of their lives to caring for them.
The details are contained in the document I table today, but I would just like to highlight a few items to illustrate the manner in which the government has been working energetically right across the service delivery spectrum to improve the quality of life for Canberrans and the liveability of our city: 40 new hospital beds, new operating theatres, Australia’s first public nurse-led walk-in centre, the ACT’s first dedicated neurosurgery suite, more money for community-based mental health and a new mental health assessment unit.
There are more teachers in our primary schools, more teachers in our high schools and colleges, smaller average class sizes and dedicated literacy and numeracy coordinators in every school, new schools where they are needed and upgrades everywhere else. There are fibre broadband connections to every school and two-thirds of the preschools and around $30 million in extra funding for the CIT and a pledge to see every young Canberran in full-time education, training or employment at least until the age of 17.
There is a new ACT skills network, reform to government procurement processes that will benefit local businesses, leadership in the area of climate change, with a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, the extension of the feed-in tariff to large-scale generators capable of powering many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of homes, and great progress on a new Cotter Dam which will massively increase our water storage capacity overall and help secure our water supply for generations to come.
There is an aggressive push to get Canberrans out of their cars and into more sustainable forms of transport with dollars to match. There are dedicated bus lanes and bus priority measures on major roads. There is the Redex high frequency bus service running every 15 minutes from 7 am to 7 pm and more than $7 million extra in the past two years alone on cycling and pedestrian infrastructure.
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