Page 573 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
investment confidence that is occurring as far as improving the look of the city centre is concerned.
I will focus on the city centre in my comments but, first of all, it is worth reiterating some of the programs Mr Hargreaves has put in place. If you listen to Mr Smyth, his black and white view is “Liberal good, Labor bad”. The Canberra community is a little more thoughtful and intelligent than that. People would appreciate that urban maintenance is a basic ongoing responsibility of all governments.
Urban maintenance continues across all governments, regardless of their political persuasion. It is essentially a responsibility that all governments take very seriously. It is worth highlighting some of the issues and programs the government has put in place, including the extensive efforts the government made during the drought to ensure the survival of so much of the Canberra urban forest. Particular efforts were made to ensure that 18,000 individual street and park trees were hand-watered during the drought period to ensure that they had the best possible chance of survival through the prolonged drought we faced. During that time of very severe drought a large number of trees died, but without that hand-watering program even more trees would have died. Those are the sorts of efforts the government has made to ensure that we seriously look after, as well as we can, the beautiful urban forest that makes Canberra such a unique city to live in.
Urban infrastructure improvements have also taken place. The first stage of City Walk West has been completed. That has made a huge difference to the area along Alinga Street from Northbourne Avenue to West Row and Moore Street. It has enabled that area of the city to come to life. This government put that project in place. Another one worth highlighting is the Childers Street project. The physical work on that project will commence shortly. That will also see a major uplift in the appearance and quality of that new street which is so central to the vision the government has for City West, which the ANU, the private sector and the government are all investing in.
The government is continuing with a whole range of other programs. The restoration of Yarralumla Creek commenced last year with the removal of pest willows and poplars and revegetation of the creek with over 18,000 native plants. These are not haphazard measures. This is not a sign of a government that has taken a haphazard approach or a government that is not investing in maintenance of the urban infrastructure; it is quite the contrary. As Mr Hargreaves emphasised in his speech, the overall report card issued by Engineers Australia indicated that the overall condition of roads in the ACT was good. There is, of course, the fact that, because of the way the commonwealth developed the city, we have a very large amount of ageing infrastructure but the overall level of the road network was assessed as good by Engineers Australia.
I would also like to emphasise what is happening in the city centre. The city centre is the urban centre of Canberra, which is highly valued by all Canberrans. It is the centre for business; it is the centre for a whole range of municipal functions; it is the centre for cultural activity and it is the centre for retailing and other activities. Here the government’s policies are paying huge dividends. The fact that we have given a strong and clear commitment to the streamlining of planning processes, to support development proposals and to ensure that things get off the ground, has seen an unprecedented level of investment in our city centre. There can be no stronger endorsement of the government’s policies than the level of development activity that is currently occurring in the city
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .