Page 2270 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 June 2005
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I am a daily visitor to the Calwell shops and have built good relationships with many of the other visitors to the shops and with many of the owners and operators at the Calwell shops over many years. They have been my locus, my urban environment, if you like.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: I regret to say, with supreme irony, that the time for this debate has now expired.
MR GENTLEMAN: We have another four minutes or so, Mr Deputy Speaker.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do have that wrong. Yes, we have another 4½ minutes.
MR GENTLEMAN: I was surprised yesterday when you, Mr Pratt, railed against the blot on the landscape that was the Calwell shopping centre. Hansard will confirm this outrage, but I believe it was something along the lines of “the Calwell shopping centre is covered in graffiti”. As I said, I was surprised by this statement. I did not remember the ghastly sight of graffiti coating the Calwell shopping centre when I stopped to buy bread on Tuesday night from my local bakery. I thought my eyes might have been going and I resolved to visit both the optometrist and the Calwell shops in the near future.
I visited the shopping centre last night and again this morning on my way to work. I found no graffiti whatsoever in the public areas of the shopping centre. I found no graffiti at the Calwell Club. I found no graffiti at the local service station. So there is no confusion, I have here a set of photos of the Calwell shopping centre taken this morning—11 in all. I think you will find they show that, rather than being covered in graffiti as Mr Pratt would have us believe, the Calwell shopping centre is a bright, smart and clean local shopping precinct. Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table these photos in defence of Calwell, which is not the Canberra version of south central that you, Mr Pratt, would have us believe.
Leave granted.
MR GENTLEMAN: I present the following paper:
Calwell Shopping Centre—Copies of photographs (11).
Rather than representing Calwell in this way, I would like to promote the area and the community that I represent and to which I belong. Calwell is not a mess; it is a great place to visit. I urge Mr Pratt to apologise to the good residents and shop owners of Calwell. As the photos I have tabled today demonstrate quite clearly, it is a clean and bright shopping centre that provides a locus for the surrounding community. This is a view supported by the shop owners and operators of the shopping centre with whom I have spoken.
Calwell Quality Meats, for example, is keen to promote their business and high-quality products within Calwell and beyond. They unfortunately had a break-in over the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. We are very pleased with the police response at around 6 o’clock on the Sunday morning and very pleased with the work of the forensic unit, one of whom apparently was previously a butcher, which arrived shortly after to take evidence of the break-in. The Calwell newsagent, another thriving local business that is
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