Page 931 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 21 April 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
disasters that we have seen. We are pleased to see things moving in the right direction, and we are grateful for all of the hard work by so many staff who have kept this city running through all of that. We will continue to advocate for the best city services for Canberrans.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (10.41): I am pleased to stand today to speak on the 2020-21 appropriation bill. I do this with some sense of familiarity, because under this Labor-Greens government not much changes for city services. We see more money committed here and there under ambiguous titles. It makes it difficult to compare year with year. We have road and community infrastructure. We have road safety improvements. Things change all the time.
What does not change is that this city services portfolio is intensely personal for constituents, residents, Canberrans. As soon as people back their car out of the driveway, walk to the bus stop or take the dog around the block, they encounter things in the city services portfolio that they would like to see better done.
The most common things raised with me when I am out and about in my electorate are not light rail, the hospital expansion or climate change but the everyday city services issues that really annoy people. It is about footpaths, potholes, streetlights and dogs. Those are the things that people get quite annoyed about. People ask me where their hard-earned money is going if it is not going towards the basic municipal services in their neighbourhood. That is what the budget is all about.
I can tell residents where their money is not going. It is not going to the Lawrence Wackett Crescent and Tharwa Drive intersection in Theodore, where residents have witnessed accidents and asked for traffic lights to be installed. It is not going to extending Dunoon Street to the Hindmarsh Drive and Palmer Street intersection so that O’Malley residents are not banked up in hundreds of metres of traffic each weekday morning at Tyagarah Street each time someone tries to turn right.
It is not going towards installing a pedestrian crossing outside Black Mountain School. It is not going to installing parking bollards at Melba shops in Ginninderra, although there have been numerous break-ins at these shops in past years. It is not going towards duplicating Gungahlin Drive from Clarrie Hermes Drive and Horse Park Drive to the intersection with Gundaroo Drive near the Gungahlin Lakes Club to reduce the traffic congestion in that area. It is not going to fixing Beltana Road in Pialligo, an issue brought up continuously by Kurrajong members for over five years now. Business owners and residents continue to be disadvantaged because this Labor-Greens government have put this in the too-hard basket.
It is not going to redesigning and improving the northern car park at Cooleman Ridge in Murrumbidgee. Like my Liberals and Greens colleagues, I was pleased that the minister finally decided to listen to his own electorate’s wishes and stop the destruction of the local green space in that area, but that does not give the government a get-out-of-jail-free card because there still needs to be a parking solution found for residents. Even better, they need to address the shopping centre issues in Molonglo that have contributed to the greater demand for parking in Weston Creek.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video