Page 2268 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 June 2005
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There are a whole lot of issues around the no waste goal. I do agree with some of the concerns that Mr Pratt expressed about rubbish. There is something wrong when people feel that they can just chuck their rubbish out of their car or on the footpath as they are walking along. I think this is an attitudinal thing. I am old enough to remember a most amazing campaign when I lived in Victoria. It must have been good because I can still remember it. I was a child at the time. It made people feel bad about doing things like that.
There are steps that the government can take to better manage sustainable transport. I do not want to sound like a tired old record—
Mr Hargreaves: You do.
DR FOSKEY: I am not tired. Clearly, we are very keen on the development of cyclepaths and public transport. It is already pretty clear that, for many families, this is a way of weekend recreation. But I have to say that I have not noticed too many off-road cyclepaths outside the inner city. That is something that we can think of for the new suburbs. Let us not just think roads. Let us make sure that we also have footpaths and off-road cyclepaths.
The safety of our urban environment and consideration of youth are also issues that we think that the government could pay more attention to. Young people make up 24 per cent of our population. That is the highest proportion that any state or territory has. As such, they are legitimate stakeholders in consultations. The government’s economic white paper notes that 10 per cent of our 18 to 24-year-olds leave Canberra each year. Whether that is because of a perception that the ACT lacks entertainment and arts attractive to them and whether it is also because of a sense that they are not in a real city—okay, they all watch TV; their idea of a real city might not be the same as ours—their perceptions are valid.
Let us listen to our youth, since our economic future depends upon it, and build them into the design and planning process of our places. Recent consultations by the Youth Coalition have identified that many young people consider themselves marginalised from public space—a marginalisation enforced by social attitudes of shopkeepers, police, security guards and the like. So it is not just urban design we need to change; it is attitudes.
Urban furniture, believe it or not, can be designed to be comfortable, to encourage you to sit. Also we need to remember that sometimes people need to sleep on the outdoor furniture. The blue, steel seats that are increasingly proliferating around Canberra are extremely cold, hard and especially difficult to sleep on. Using crime prevention environmental design as a framework—
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella) (4.14): Let me thank Mr Pratt for raising in the Assembly today the issue of our urban surrounds. The issue is an important one as we seek to maintain the developed public space, to beautify our surrounds and for
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