Page 2445 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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The second area of concern is footpaths and drains. I am hard pressed to find any significant funding for footpaths and drains. I hope it is absorbed within the $10 million capital upgrades that I see on page 995 of budget paper No 3. I have previously raised in this place the Condor and Chisholm drains, which were quite substantially destroyed in the January 2007 rains. Nine months later I think we are beginning to see repair work on those. It has been a long time coming. Do not forget that further damage was done to those drains during the winter rains of May-June because the government did not have the funding available to fix those projects when they should have been fixed properly.
The third area of concern is shopping centre upgrades. I welcome the minister’s announcements yesterday of, I think, four to five or maybe half a dozen shopping centre upgrades. But there are a lot more that need attention. The minister cannot fix all 12 or 15 in one year, but if the program had not been neglected over some five or six years the bill might not be quite as high as it is now.
The government’s pay parking at hospitals was a no-brainer. Of course, we now know that they lost $500,000 on the harebrained scheme that they ran at the public hospitals. That was a failed effort. They lost half a million dollars and they scared the pants off everybody in the community. They inconvenienced people, and for what—a $500 million loss after a management debacle of 12 months.
I want to turn quickly to the recycling of water. My erstwhile colleague mentioned that matter, even if he did raid the Actew line item. However, I cannot go past mentioning the fact that I do not see any initiative in this budget or in any statements appending the budget that the government might even be thinking about using its public building assets, its roof spaces, for at least a moderate collection of some rainwater and certainly the recycling of government institutional grey water, perhaps with a view to at least trying to provide some local water for collocated green spaces. Use your imagination, government.
Mr Hargreaves: I told you: Macarthur House.
MR PRATT: If you are trialling it there, could we now see a decision taken? Where is this decision in this budget? It is not there. How long does a trial have to go for?
I now want to turn to the look of the city. This government regularly crows about how wonderfully clean looking the city is. We know that a lot of areas have been neglected. Why does it take an MLA or persistent representations from the community to try and get things fixed? I refer to Melbourne Avenue. According to local residents, there was long grass in Melbourne Avenue for at least four months before the government was able to get out there and cut it down.
It took a concerted effort by the community and an MLA to encourage the government to take down the CFMEU signs sitting up on Yamba Drive and Athllon Drive. They had been up there for six months. Where are the government’s inspectors? Where is the inspection program, the quality assurance program where TAMS inspectors say, “Melbourne Avenue has had long grass for six months; there are some CFMEU signs that have been up for four or five months; we had better do
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