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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2199 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Driving around Canberra, one can actually see the deterioration - street signs broken, litter along the side of the road, long grass, streetlights out, to name just a few things. Once upon a time these things would have been fixed within a week but nowadays, because the service has been stripped to the bone, it is weeks, sometimes months, before anything is done. Indeed, we had to kick off a hotline before the Minister copied having a hotline to fix street signs and, lo and behold, street signs were fixed.

The Minister will tell you about the $2.3m being spent on city maintenance. What about the suburbs? I am not talking about suburban shopping centre refurbishment. I had a good look at the list of those, and it is pretty disgusting when his own electorate misses out on that sort of stuff. We all know that the Government is spending this money in Civic only because of the Olympics. If the Government regularly maintained the various services, we would not have to spend such large amounts each budget.

Surprisingly, the budget papers revealed that 189 of Canberra's 440 playgrounds do not meet Australian standards. Fifteen playgrounds are being upgraded each year at a cost of $20,000 each. What this might mean is that by the year 2011 Mr Corbell's new son, Henry, will be able to play in a playground which meets the standards. The only problem is that Henry will be 12 at the time and he will not be allowed to. Mr Smyth would no doubt make an analogy between the Australian standards and cars - I think he did once before - rattling off some jargon that some cars built years ago do not meet the standards of today.

Whatever the excuse, I just cannot understand why his department has allowed it to become so bad. Perhaps it is because their resources have been pared away. They do not have the money to do it. They do not have the inspectors to go around and check. I am told that departmental inspectors do go around and check whether the playgrounds are okay. Sure, that is what they do. They go around and identify them and say, "It is no good". What happens next? A report is filled in, then nothing happens.

It is not only playgrounds that are failing to meet the standards but also ACT roads. At the time of self-government, the design life of our roads was 20 years. That is a decade ago. We will probably hear the Minister say, "You blokes were in government at one time. Why did you not fix it?". That is the constant bleating reply that we get to this sort of thing. These guys dig deep into the bowels of history and say, "You guys did not do it. Why do you ask us to do it?". With your indulgence may I go to my second 10 minutes, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, go ahead.

MR HARGREAVES: I will not need all of it. Going into the bowels of history and asking why we did not fix it means absolutely nothing to me. This Government has been around now for five years. It has had five years to identify that somebody else did not do it, to provide the resources to do it and to get on and do it. This is a can-do government, I am told. As far as I am concerned, this can-do government has half of the pieces of its meccano set missing and cannot do it.

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