Page 566 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR HARGREAVES: If you added up all the things he said—
Mr Pratt: Why didn’t you bank the money in the good times?
MR HARGREAVES: and all the things we have to fix by next Thursday, you could not afford it.
Mr Pratt: Why didn’t you bank—
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt! I warn you. I have called you to order several times. I am not going to put up with it any longer.
MR HARGREAVES: The Stanhope government has a strong commitment to maintaining the appearance and safety of our city. As Canberra grows older, many of our assets deteriorate. The budget provides $9.8 million in capital upgrades to target these areas to make sure our city is at its best for the community to enjoy. I have stated before in this place that the government has implemented a range of strategies to enhance the urban environment, from both social and environmental perspectives. Actions relate to litter, graffiti, shopping centres, natural environments, streetscapes, landscape refurbishment, fire hazard reduction, roads and footpath networks.
The ACT government manages over 6,000 hectares of urban parkland in Canberra, ranging from town and district parks through to pedestrian parkland, road verges and seminatural open space. However, while we had good winter and spring rains, this summer has been the hottest on record, with below average rainfall. Also the drought over the last three years has had a considerable effect on the appearance and health of the overall landscape, particularly with the deaths of trees and weed infestation of grassed areas. However, with regard to the overall maintenance of public places in Canberra, I assure you that the ACT government remains committed to the highest affordable standards. While the budget in recent years has been tight, there has been a specific commitment to maintaining service levels. We have also established a new parks and trees section within the department to focus on improving the presentation of prominent parks and visitor destinations.
Our focus is on providing quality service to the standard expected by the community within the available resources. Good results on levels of customer satisfaction are reported by the community through the parks and places annual customer satisfaction survey on the maintenance of our urban parks. The 2005 independent report on tracking of usage and satisfaction with Canberra’s urban parks and open places, through in-park and telephone surveys, indicates that customers are very satisfied with the maintenance and cleanliness of parks. There was a 92 to 94 per cent satisfaction rate for 2002 to 2005. There has also been a positive shift in the cleaning and maintenance of facilities such as barbecues, where the satisfaction rate was 77 to 82 per cent. The absence of litter in lakes and on the shoreline went from 69 to 82 per cent for the period.
Although the level of satisfaction with the maintenance of children’s play equipment has declined slightly—from 90 to 82 per cent—it is still very positive. Since 1999 the level of visitor satisfaction with the experience provided in Canberra’s district and town parks has risen from 89 to 96 per cent. Interviews with visitors to these parks identified that
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .