Page 1560 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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Mr Lamont mentioned that those shopping centres, with their associated health services, the supermarkets, the schools, the churches in some cases, and the community base for people moving from outside Canberra into a new environment, are dying. They certainly are. But why? They are dying quite simply because of lack of people and, as importantly, from lack of diversity of the people who live in those areas. That has to be understood. Because of the way Canberra was planned, it meant that new people of a similar age moved into areas on an ongoing basis. We have to accept that. The only way we can overcome that problem now is to consider a renewal program. I think we would all accept that change is probably the only constant that we can rely on. I think we really have to come to grips with what we want for those centres in Canberra. Do we really want to get rid of the small neighbourhood shopping centres? Are they past their usefulness? Unfortunately, if we do that, or if we accept that it is just one of those things that we have to consider, it will not be just the shopping centres that will go; all of their associated services will go as well.
Mr Berry and Mr Connolly would be very well aware of the quite dramatic costs of providing health services, HACC services and other appropriate services for the elderly, young families and so on. Those services become dramatically expensive if they are being provided for a very small number of people. We need a large number of people who need those services in each area. We are talking about diversity. The people who will really suffer if we allow the suburban shopping centres and service centres to die are not people like all of us who are sitting around here today - people with cars, people with jobs, people who go somewhere else to work; they are the old people and the young mums with their kids, who do not have adequate transport, who cannot get out to other centres.
So what we are really talking about, and what Mr Lamont aptly talked about, is the need for diversity and the need for choice in all areas of Canberra, the need to make sure that we have young families and old people living in areas, side by side. That means that we would overcome the old problems of Canberra - the old empty suburbs, with nobody home during the day because everyone is the same age and is at work at the same time; everyone gets old together, and so on. There are certain positives to that situation; but it is an abnormal and wrong way to get a really good community spirit and for Canberra to have that soul which everybody talks about, which Canberra has, and which we know it has. Some people outside Canberra do not know that it has it, as Mr Kaine will speak about - probably not today.
Mr Kaine: I think we will leave that until next week.
MRS CARNELL: We will talk about soul next week; fair enough. I strongly support Mr Lamont's motion.
MR HUMPHRIES (12.16): I am very grateful to my colleague for so promptly vacating the space for me. Madam Speaker, it is impossible to talk about urban renewal without talking about urban infill, as my colleague Mrs Carnell and, I think, others have said in this debate. It is important for us to understand that we cannot pursue these questions on an ad hoc basis. I think the point has already been made by other speakers that the planning and the approach that we take to this question is vitally important and, at the same time, needs to embrace the community's aspirations for the overall plan of our city and the way in which it should look into the future.
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