Page 3392 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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MS GALLAGHER: I thank Mr Hargreaves for the question. I also acknowledge that this is the final question of the Seventh Assembly. Hear, hear! That was the 583rd question I have taken without notice during the term of the Assembly and your final question, Mr Hargreaves, as you are intending retirement after surviving 14 years—
Mr Hargreaves: Voluntary retirement.
MS GALLAGHER: Voluntary retirement, yes, the Hansard shall show that—voluntary retirement after 14 years of long and dedicated service to question time. It is perhaps more a sentence than many of us can understand. Thank you, Mr Hargreaves. The Assembly will miss, I think, your insight and your humour during question time and your knowledge or thereabouts of appropriate standing orders.
It is appropriate, as the final question of this Assembly, that we look forward to the next years ahead for this city. We are reaching our centennial year and I think, in terms of reaching our maturity as a city, it is very important that we focus on the future and what are those key areas to ensure that Canberra remains the vibrant dynamic city that we are all so proud of. It is with this in mind, I think, that I have been focusing on our regional connections and making sure that we are putting in place all the work we need to do to make sure that Canberra plays a strong role in terms of the future of this rapidly growing region.
We have signed the MOU with the Premier of New South Wales, and this sets out some of those key issues for New South Wales-ACT collaboration. It identifies regional direction statements which should identify future economic opportunities for the region, and I have been saying for some time that if the region around us has a strong economic outlook, then that has benefits for the ACT as well.
The MOU is also looking at infrastructure needs and the shared view of planning those requirements, including how we fairly apportion costs. This is very important when we see the level of traffic that comes from across the border every day and uses ACT infrastructure, particularly in the areas of health and education. I think, in terms of our own future, the MOU identifies health and education as key opportunities for us into the future.
We know that some of the more interesting facts that are coming out of some of the work being done by our educational providers are that 35 per cent of the total higher education domestic student population in our universities is from interstate. In the case of the University of Canberra, 90 per cent of these interstate enrolments are from New South Wales. For the ACT, the percentage is actually 61. I think there is enormous capacity to grow this sector of our economy. It is clean, it is clever, it creates high-paid, high-skilled jobs for the workplace of the future.
In the area of health, we already service the region. A quarter of the occasions of care in our public hospitals involve New South Wales residents, and a third of those on our elective surgery waiting lists are New South Wales residents.
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