Page 48 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 7 December 2004

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indicates the need for a further committee and not the overburdening of already overstretched committees.

We need a committee that is not so taken up with dealing with other important service system issues that it rarely has time to properly consider community service and social equity issues. We know that in the Fourth Assembly, when issues relating to children and young people were considered by the education committee and disability issues were considered, if at all, under the auspices of the health committee, very few matters relating to these areas ever got to committee.

Of the nine reports produced by the education committee in that Assembly, for example, all were directed to a school or preschool related issue, except for the examination of annual and financial reports. The current government in its last term did a great deal of important planning work in the area of community services and social equity. It has, among other things, developed a social plan, a children’s plan, a future directions plan for the delivery of disability services and a plan to address the issues related to carers. It has undertaken major studies on the disadvantaged and on homelessness in the ACT and has identified indigenous and multicultural affairs as areas requiring integrated support.

This is clearly only the beginning. After the planning phase must come the implementation, and in the area of social equity and community services we know that this usually proves to be far more difficult. Governments are too often far better at developing and writing papers than they are at delivering quality outcomes on the ground for individuals. An Assembly social and community services committee must be available to consider those matters where planning and implementation do not gel, where gaps are discovered in the plans and where new matters come to light.

Standing committees of the Assembly have continuously made strong, positive contributions to the development of government policy. They have also, very constructively, held government to account and acted as a bridge between community and parliament. It is hard to understand what the government really hopes to achieve by abolishing the community service and social equity committee this term. It will serve only to overburden the remaining committees, as I pointed out, and to ensure that many important issues will not get the detailed Assembly consideration they deserve.

Furthermore, Mr Corbell’s point that select committees can be set up to deal with issues that are not covered by standing committees fails to reflect the fact that a majority government can choose not to address certain issues, even when these are of great concern to other members of the Assembly and to the community itself.

Finally, in response to Mr Corbell implying that I am only seeking a committee that I can be a member of, and perhaps chair, I think that in that implication there is an acknowledgment that there has been a process of exclusion in the setting up of these committees. Also, there is a personal sort of remark there which I will not engage with, simply because we have raised this as a matter of community concern. I certainly would like to be a member of that committee. I do not necessarily need to be the chair. I think that committee needs to exist and I have stated the reasons why.

MR QUINLAN (Molonglo—Treasurer and Minister for Economic Development) (12.12): Thank you, Mr Speaker; I will be rather brief. I rise, first of all, in relation to


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