Page 2440 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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Of major concern this funding round is the beginning of corporate sponsorship going hand in hand with the supply of municipal services. By this I refer, of course, to Adshel billboard bus shelters. It reeks in the same way as the corporate sponsorship of schools in Sydney. I do not know whether members remember the outcry when that first started. In Canberra we will be seeing 200 new bus shelters erected free of charge and 200 large advertising billboards which, up until now, it has been illegal to display in the ACT.
Mr Hargreaves: It is 133, not 230, and you know it.
DR FOSKEY: The minister tells me that it is 133, so I correct my statement.
MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The minister could make that comment in his concluding remarks; he should not shout it across the chamber. Dr Foskey has the call.
DR FOSKEY: Thank you, Madam temporary Deputy Speaker. I believe you are doing an excellent job, or you are trying to. I am not sure when the government changed its policy on billboards in the ACT. Maybe I was away that day. This is the end of a long-standing planning policy to ensure that Canberra would be free of advertising that would detract from its bush capital status, and that is the main difference that visitors to our city notice at present. Apparently, the bus shelters will be similar to those that Adshel has erected across the country, making Canberra, with its unique planning laws, look much like any other city in this regard, for at least 15 years. I wonder what the NCA has to say about it.
I would also like the government to tell us how it will refuse requests to place billboards on buildings and elsewhere now that bus shelters are to be advertising features. Seating in shelters will certainly be welcomed by bus travellers whose waits have been lengthened since the new cost-cutting timetable was introduced last December. However, we will see whether people are as happy about the price that Canberra will pay for the new shelters. In reply to a question that I asked in the estimates process it was clear that the advertisements will meet the national guidelines on advertising standards, but the ACT has no particular control over content and style.
We are yet to see how this translates into advertisements that will now be there to distract the drivers at whom they are aimed. Of course, we have to remember that these billboards are for car drivers and passengers, not for people waiting for buses. They are only incidental to Adshel’s aims.
Mr Barr: What about the ads on the backs of existing buses?
Mr Hargreaves: What about those green triangles?
MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hargreaves!
DR FOSKEY: I would like the government to reassure Canberra residents that they have not given up control of the messages that confront us in our streets if a significant number of people find them offensive. The only possible justification for
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