Page 2965 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 August 2008
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Earlier this week my colleague the Minister for Police and Emergency Services announced that the Gungahlin police station will operate 24 hours a day from January 2009. Twenty-four additional police and an extra two dedicated patrol cars will be stationed at Gungahlin from next year to provide Gungahlin residents with a permanent full-time police station. The government has committed an additional $3.1 million in recurrent funding and $200,000 in capital funding to do this.
Mr Speaker, this expansion has been made possible through this government’s major investment in policing by increasing the total number of police in the ACT by an additional 122 police since 2001-2002. My colleague the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation also announced this week the government’s commitment to building a pool and indoor leisure centre for the Gungahlin community.
We are anticipating that the new centre will include a 50-metre pool, a 25-metre pool, at least one court space—for example, a netball court—and associated amenities such as a cafe and gymnasium. In stark contrast, Mr Speaker, the Liberal Party, in response to the announcement of a major leisure centre and Olympic swimming pool for Gungahlin, have committed to not building such a facility for the people of Gungahlin.
The Liberal Party have declared unequivocally that they will go into this election with a policy of no pool for Gungahlin. That is an amazing lack of commitment by the Liberal Party for the people of Gungahlin. It is almost a spiteful response from the Liberal Party to an announcement by the government. It is a petulant response from an immature and inexperienced leader that the Liberal Party, if they are elected to government, has absolutely no intention of providing a swimming pool, aquatic centre or gymnasium for the residents of Gungahlin.
We are committed, Mr Speaker, to building a better city and a stronger community, and the developments that I have outlined above will allow the people of Gungahlin to benefit from yet another state-of-the-art community facility in the leisure centre. This commitment comes on top of other developments of community and recreation spaces in Gungahlin including the establishment of the Harrison district playing fields and neighbourhood oval, feasibility and forward design of the Throsby district playing fields and forward design of an enclosed oval next to the swimming pool site in the town centre.
The government is also committed to improving economic activity in the Gungahlin area by releasing blocks of land for commercial development in the Gungahlin business park. Land sales in June this year will lead to a real boost for employment in the area, which will benefit both the Gungahlin community and local business operators in the town centre, thus helping to secure the economic future of Gungahlin.
Mr Speaker, the government has also been leading the way in the development of child and family centres with a very successful one-stop shop for parents operating at the Gungahlin child and family centre. The centre brings together integrated services for children, including maternal and child health, play groups, therapy, parenting services and allied health services such as counselling and nutrition. And the Gungahlin child and family centre is currently leading a project which involves the engagement of the families attending the Koori pre-schools in Ngunnawal and Holt.
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