Page 3275 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 October 2022
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This is right in the front of the entrance to the Canberra Centre near the fountain. Go and look for yourself, please. Take a photo; you should post it—actually, we might do that.
We have got “Canberra potholes” taking off as a very popular Facebook site. Maybe we need a Facebook site called “Canberra paving” or “Canberra footpaths”, as well—something to look into. It is disappointing that we have, as reported in the Chief Minister’s response to me, lots of very high-level officers; and, again, without the detail being provided. I think I will be interested in how that breaks down even a little bit further. (Extension of time granted.)
In addition to those concerns, it was disappointing, as was mentioned yesterday during questions without notice, that the City Renewal Authority did not meet its land sales targets. This is a concern. How does the government come up with such targets that it keeps failing? I wonder if there is a lesson there! Perhaps pick realistic targets or actually meet them. If they are targets based on all of the evidence and real data they have—and this is across the board with the government’s indicative land release programs—why is the government consistently failing to meet its own targets? Perhaps you should pick targets you can achieve. That would make sense to me.
Perhaps the most surprising thing to come out of estimates was the question I asked about the progress of the consideration of the city stadium. I must admit, I asked this just with a sense of curiosity, because the Chief Minister has been talking about a city stadium probably for as long as I have been attending to ACT politics, and, frankly, that has not been as long as most people here.
The city stadium—“We’re looking into it. We’ve done studies. We’ve had trips to see what these things look like in other places.” It was actually quite surprising to me, and it was not a trick question—it was: “What is the status of the government’s consideration of the civic stadium?” Then the Chief Minister came up with some rather interesting reasoning as to why it was not going to happen. I must admit, the reasoning that the Chief Minister delivered was probably something anyone could have thought of a decade ago—that is, it would get used only for a small period during the year because it is a stadium. I wonder if anyone ever thought of that before, or did it just occur to the Chief Minister during estimates! That certainly created some news. Again, I would just say from my point of view, it was a totally innocent question—“You have been talking about this for a long time: what is the status?”
And as it has become clear through later statements: it is not going to happen. Even Senator Pocock was startled by that. We are hearing about some other things that might happen, but maybe there will be reasons why they cannot that are pretty obvious now. It is pretty unsatisfactory, when we have a specialist levy and we have a specialist authority to take care of the city—and I would encourage members to go and walk around the city, not just in front of the Canberra Centre entrance near the fountain, and check out the paving and the footpaths. Aren’t these rather obvious things that should be first grade and a service to people who run businesses in the city who pay a special levy? They pay a special levy to do what? To renew the city centre—the City Renewal Authority—but the most basic service is being done badly, so I question the priorities of the CRA.
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