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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3014 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

The fact is that there was no promise or no revelation in the lead-up to the election that they would be introducing paid parking. Minister Wood, I believe, said that once the government puts paid parking in their car parks, without a doubt both the Hyperdome and Westfield would put paid parking in their car parks. You have to ask why are they doing this? They say it will help create a sustainable transport system. If that were the case, why didn't they reveal this in the lead-up to the election? The answer quite clearly is that they were secretive. They don't tell people what it is they intend to do; they don't consult properly. We have already seen this start to happen in the last nine or 10 months. We hear lots of words about being honest, open, consultative and transparent, yet the reality is that we don't see this happening.

The other case that springs to mind is the promise of additional rangers. I believe an additional eight rangers were promised, but that never eventuated. There may be four full-time equivalents on the ground but that involves moving staff from offices back out into the field and shifting the burden to other parts of the system. The promise quite clearly made was that they would be putting extra rangers on the ground. Again, we cannot find the extra rangers. If you look at the staffing profile inside the Urban Services documents that have been received you will see that there will not be an extra eight rangers. So all they are doing is spreading the resources thinner. They said they would do it better. As I said in the health debate, they said they would do more with the existing money, they would get better value for money, but we are yet to see that anywhere in this budget.

One of Labor's fact sheets in the lead-up to the election centred on better planning for shops and local centres, and making them more viable. In the last budget we put money forward which was spent on developing plans for the refurbishment of Deakin shops. As you would know, Mr Speaker, we had an ongoing program of developing and redeveloping local shopping centres to make them sustainable and to make them more viable. Once the plans were drawn up, the money was made available in the following years for those redevelopments to be carried out.

We have done it at Manuka, we have done it at Kingston, we have done it at Narrabundah and we have done it at Curtin. We started the process for Kambah, which is really good, and that is continuing. We also started the process for Deakin, and the Deakin residents and the Deakin trading community had an expectation that it would continue. But, no, that has disappeared from the budget. I think the shameful thing is that when Mr Wood was approached and shown the plans, he seemed to have no idea that these plans existed. Decisions are being made about things which apparently the minister is either uninterested in or uninformed about. That doesn't give one confidence in the way that this budget is being put together. It doesn't give one confidence in how this government deals with community expectations. I think it is a shame when plans that governments and communities have worked on do not come to fruition.

Mr Speaker, there are a number of key priorities that we started when we were in government-in particular the look of the city and making sure the streetscape is maintained; and putting more money into asset management. I would like to pay the government a compliment for finally ensuring that additional asset management money appears in the budget so that we can look after our roads, bridges, signs, and all those other parts of a vital infrastructure that need to be cared for, and if cared for now won't cost us more in the future. So well done for putting those figures into the budget. They

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