Page 2062 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 June 2021
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Mr Parton: Is this the same guy?
MR DAVIS: I will take the interjection; I appreciate it. Funnily enough, Mr Parton, it is the same guy. This is what it looks like to take things issue by issue and respond on merit. This is what not treating every single policy under a strict, rigid ideological framework looks like. This is what it looks like to work with all 25 members when they have great ideas but to be active and prepared to call out things that you do not think are good ideas. That is what an active and considered democracy must look like.
Yes, it is fair to say that in the short time I have been here, I have been quick to call out other members of this place who I do not feel have gotten the policy solutions right. But on this issue—an issue about Lake Tuggeranong and amenity around the lake and in the lake, improving infrastructure for our shared constituency—I stand shoulder to shoulder with Ms Lawder. I commend her motion.
MR PARTON (Brindabella) (3.51): I rise to wholeheartedly support my friend and colleague Ms Lawder in her attempts to bring improvements to Lake Tuggeranong. Sometimes when you listen to debates in this place, you read budget papers and you watch slick PR videos from the Chief Minister’s massive machine—it is a bit bigger than ours—you would swear that Canberra falls off a big cliff south of Hindmarsh Drive, that you just drive along and when you get to Hindmarsh Drive it is gone.
There is a big part of Canberra south of Hindmarsh Drive. I have said in this chamber before that when I have been trying to explain Tuggeranong to those who have never been to Canberra, I say that Tuggeranong is the part of Canberra that is most like the rest of Australia. Often, we appear to be punished for that and often we seem to be left behind.
Although the minister rose and suggested that he was committed to Tuggeranong and the lake, residents and community members are not as buoyant in assessing what the government has delivered thus far, as evidenced by the speech from my Greens friend Mr Davis. Mr Davis said that he could not think of any way to amend this motion because it reflects the views that are coming to him from constituents.
It was wonderful for Mr Steel to stand up in this chamber and talk about the box-ticking exercise that this government has done on Anketell Street. Do you want to hear about box ticking? Mr Steel spoke about the bike infrastructure on Anketell Street. I am a cyclist, and Anketell Street was not a road that I would have chosen to ride on, because there are a lot of places where two lanes come down to one; there are too many cars; and there is not enough bitumen. I was over the moon when we were told we were going to have this new bike infrastructure on Anketell Street. I remember that on the day I went to ride it, I thought, “Hang on a second; this doesn’t actually connect to anything.” There is no safe way to ride your bike to the section of new bike infrastructure on Anketell Street. It looks wonderful, but it is like a bridge to nowhere. That is the biggest single reason that nobody uses it. It is wonderful infrastructure as a stand-alone, but it does not connect to any part of the network, so cyclists are faced with exactly the same problems they had before. Mr Steel is probably quite aware of this, and I am hoping that it does get fixed, but I do not think
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