Page 1516 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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… its target demographic is younger than Mr Doszpot and, indeed, younger than AM radio listeners, generally speaking, and perhaps even the audience of the print edition of the Canberra Times.
However, this motion is not about me. I have become quite used to Mr Barr’s peculiar sense of humour and his often quite scathing and disrespectful sarcasm. This motion is about the older members of our community who do take Mr Barr’s disrespect to heart, those seniors who fail to see the humour in his condescending and cavalier attitude, an attitude which is, sadly, becoming his trademark. After all, he is also their Chief Minister and they expect him to accept and stand up for all members of the community.
It is a pity that the Chief Minister seems to echo the attitudes of one of his former ministerial colleagues, one of Mr Barr’s former mentors and employers, the former MLA John Hargreaves. Mr Hargreaves has in the past made some particularly savage attacks on Canberra community councils, referring to their members as “geriatrics”. It would seem that Mr Hargreaves has not given up his ageist rants if his recent missive in RiotACT is any indication.
The Chief Minister is also on record with similar views to community councils. Chief Minister Barr has told us and community councils across Canberra quite clearly what he thinks of them. He said recently:
The idea that a community council is in any way representative, given that most of the attendees are of one particular gender in some councils and, again, way out of connect with the demographic distribution of people living in particular regions, is another example of where communication … need to be much broader.
We know that Mr Barr and his government take little notice of community concerns and only pay lip service to any notion of community consultation. But if he believes that these organisations are not representative and reflective of the community, I will remind him again about the statistics for some of his electorate suburbs—suburbs, coincidentally, in which there are active community councils. There is Red Hill, with 16.9 per cent of the suburb’s residents aged over 65; Downer, with 13.5 per cent; Yarralumla, with 19.2 per cent; and Forrest, with 14.7 per cent—all areas with current disputes with Mr Barr’s government.
One thing everyone in Canberra has in common, and that includes Mr Barr, is that we are all getting older. As offensive as Mr Barr may find the proposition, I can assure him that I do not prefer the alternative. I do not think it is too much to ask the Chief Minister, Mr Barr, to reflect on his ageist attitudes. As shadow minister for the ageing, that is what I am asking him to do in this motion. I ask that he “recognise the important contributions that seniors have made to the ACT economy”; “acknowledge the vital role that seniors continue to play within the ACT economy and social community”; “provide reassurance to ACT seniors that he and the ACT Government do not support ageist policies and attitudes”; “ensure equal employment opportunity practices, including for seniors, are applied within the ACT Public Service”; and
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