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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2398 ..

Mrs Carnell: So, why do they want it?

MS REILLY: The ones I have spoken to are not saying that this is going to be a big thing. Changes have already occurred for the local supermarkets in Weston Creek. This is not going to make any difference.

Mrs Carnell: Go out and ask them. They all want it. Waramanga, Holder, Chapman - they all want it.

MS REILLY: Obviously, they tell different stories to different people. If you look at Woden, you could ask the same question. Who is going to be helped by shutting the town centre at Woden early? It was a deliberate planning policy to put a number of medium-density blocks around Woden. In fact, that has been continued with the Phillip development on the other side of the cemetery. There is a quite large group of new medium-density housing in that area, and all of those residents use the Woden Town Centre as their local supermarket.

Mrs Carnell: Or Southlands.

MS REILLY: They also use the Woden Town Centre, and it is very conveniently located. It is also conveniently located for people who work in Woden and live in Phillip. So, there is nothing to assist those people. They have been told that they can go somewhere else. The situation in Woden is similar to the situation in Weston Creek in that sense. There are two large group centres - Southlands, as Mrs Carnell has mentioned, and also Coles at Curtin. So, the local supermarkets in Woden also are not going to benefit from these changes. The changes to those local supermarkets have already happened. So, despite the fanfare and all the fuss - that this is going to revolutionise local supermarkets - it is not going to happen in those particular areas. It may be that, because they are older areas of Canberra, they do not count; they do not matter. But they are important.

Let us consider some of the planning processes that happen in the ACT and look at the way the ACT has developed, with the use of town centres and with the provision of accommodation and residential areas around them. Civic is another prime example of an area with a large amount of housing close by. Not all of those people have access to other centres and not all of them can afford to pay some of the high prices charged by the closest retail outlets they can get to if the town centres close early. There has actually been quite a push to revitalise Civic and to get new residential areas into Civic. Those people do not have access to shopping. They just have to go somewhere else, instead of the Government making it convenient for them to get hold of the grocery lines they might need.

Mrs Carnell: After seven.

MS REILLY: Obviously, if you live in Civic, you should not have any needs after 7 o'clock at night or 5 o'clock on a Sunday. If you have not got your goods and groceries by that time, tough. Obviously, it does not matter.

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