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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2350 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

In this budget there is quite a lot of money for things under the Streetsmart program, such as for sticking lights on the end of poles in shopping centres because the government has recognised, at last, that shopping centre precincts are particularly dangerous places for people to gather and to go through on their way home after work. People are getting mugged at ATMs, they are getting their cars broken into and stolen and they are being assaulted. One of the ways to fix that, apart from having a greater police presence, is to have adequate lighting.

A recurring theme of mine in the three years I have been a member of the Assembly-one could say that it has been a recurring nightmare-has been that the minister should do something about inadequate street lighting, particularly in places in my electorate, such as the car park at Cowlishaw and Reed streets. I have told the minister stories about how people have had all the wheels on their cars knocked off and people have been assaulted in the car park. There was, in fact, a robbery in the Hyperdome and the perpetrator ran into the car park, but could not be seen in it because the lighting was so bad. The police went into a couple of the establishments there and told people not to go out there while they were looking.

We are finally seeing some money being put into that sort of thing. I applaud the allocation of money to this sort of activity; it is just that it is happening five years too late. Why could we not have seen it happening successively over those years? I am blessed if I know. Why did we not see a significant increase in the draft budget process for the general infrastructure around town? Was that because the money did not exist. I think the government knew that it existed; it just did not tell anybody.

One of the more obvious ways of knowing that the fabric of the town has gone down is to see the deterioration on the side of the hills as one walks around. There are plastic bags and papers all over the place. Among the first to get it in the neck were the litter pickers and people of that ilk. We had people here last night trying to save their jobs. Most of the people who have suffered from this government's cost-cutting exercise over the last six years have been on as little as $23,000 a year. Whilst the senior executives have got themselves particularly attractive remuneration packages, these people have lost their jobs.

I do not think that this government is acting responsibly. In fact, the application of this money to these activities, as I said, is "too late, she cried". The ACT public will see that for what it is. The people opposite have decided to spend every razoo that they can lay their hands on and, as they are getting belted up because the fabric of the place is deteriorating, they have decided to apply a lot of the money to that. That is good, except that it is happening too late and they are not fooling anybody.

MS TUCKER (4.19): I wish to make some comments on the government's commitment to the environment and ecologically sustainable development. Whilst we know from the budget that the government is spending considerable sums of money on the environment and heritage, the point I want to make is that environmental protection and enhancement are not an integral part of the government's thinking and are not being sufficiently funded to meet the demands. Spending on the environment has not increased as much as spending in other areas. Total expenditure in the budget is up 6 per cent on the 2000 budget, yet the $22 million in the environment budget is up by only 2 per cent on last year, which is not even keeping up with inflation. Despite that, there is a need to fund

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