New South Wales State Plan

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State Plan cover.

This Liberal Party poster highlights negative press coverage of the government's record in response to the State Plan ad campaign.

The State Plan, A New Direction for NSW is a document prepared by the New South Wales Premier's Department within the Government of New South Wales and released on November 14, 2006. The plan, modelled on South Australia’s Strategic Plan (March 2004), sets priorities for the state government over a ten-year period.

According to the document, "The State Plan sets out the goals the community wants the NSW Government to work towards."

The plan puts particular focus on projects and targets in five areas:

Rights, respect and responsibility (police, justice, anti-social behaviour, citizenship and volunteering)
Delivering better services (health, education, public transport and roads)
Fairness and opportunity (social justics programmes and Aboriginal affairs)
Growing prosperity across NSW (state and regional development)
Environment for living (environment, recreation and the arts)

1 Development
2 Politics
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Development

The Premier's Department released a draft state plan in August 2006 and called for submissions from the community. The department then held consultation forums with community leaders, bureaucrats and randomly-selected members of the community at large. Their feedback was grouped by region and area of concern, and used to refine the document. The resulting 177-page document, was released in November.

The plan builds upon and links existing documents covering specific areas of portfolio responsibility:

NSW Greenhouse Plan
2006 Metropolitan Water Plan
Action for Air - 2006 Update
City of Cities: A Plan for Sydney's Future (Planning)
State Infrastructure Strategy
NSW: A New Direction for Mental Health
Two Ways Together (Aboriginal Affairs)
Stronger Together (Disability Services)

The State Plan foreshadows new documents covering:

Health
Urban Transport
Innovation Strategy
Renewable Energy

[edit] Politics

The release of the plan comes a few months before a state election. This election will be the first for the Australian Labor Party in NSW since the resignation of longtime leader Bob Carr.

Advertising for the plan's development cost the state $1 million, on top of the $1.9 million spent developing the plan itself. After its release, a further $2.6 million was spent promoting the results.

The ads put the government's press and broadcast marketing for the year at more than $10 million. Opposition leader Peter Debnam labelled the promotions as advertising—"an outrageous waste of taxpayer funds," he said, "This money should be charged back to the Labor Party."