Page 2991 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 August 2008
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Another issue is one that really falls completely within our responsibility: transport. Ms Porter talked about the transport services initiated in the second appropriation bill which was recently launched by the Chief Minister. That is a laudable approach, though I am yet to be convinced that it will do everything that the Chief Minister and the government say it will do and I will be watching it very carefully.
The feedback that I am getting is that the service basically to some extent fills the gaps in the HACC system and changes to the taxi rebate system which have made it difficult for people to get around. This will do no more than fill the existing gaps. It is something that we will have to watch carefully. I suspect that to really make it work for older Canberrans we will have to put more money and more buses into the system. It does not actually address the issues that were raised by COTA, in that it is difficult for Canberrans to move around their own suburbs. It is difficult, for instance, to move from, say, in my electorate, McKellar to Flynn or vice versa without having to go into the interchange, catch another bus and go out again. That is because of the nature of the public transport system. It often quite makes it difficult to get about and it takes very long lead times to go anywhere. All of these issues militate against social inclusion.
The issues that Ms Porter raised about the local environment are important. She has been diligent, as I have, in working with the community in getting footpaths improved. There have been considerable improvements in footpaths around the Melba shops and further afield in Melba following representations to me by elderly members of the community who live near the Melba shops. It did take the government a while to get around to it, but I think it was something that inadvertently fell through the cracks. Usually the department of urban services are very prompt: when you raise issues of dangerous footpaths in areas where elderly people live, they usually address them very quickly. After I raised this on a second occasion, it was dealt with fairly expeditiously. I am pleased that substantial areas around Melba have recently been re-vivified and that the footpaths are much safer than they were previously.
There are issues with housing. Issues relating to downsizing are very important. The experiences of my own family in assisting older members into appropriate housing point to how important it is to find the right sort of housing for the right time in life. There have been improvements in the way the Stanhope government deals with this. There were some spectacularly bad examples in the past, and in some communities the Stanhope government has to do a lot to wipe away the bad memories of mismanagement. I mention particularly the initiative of St Vincent parish in Aranda to build supported accommodation on the school and parish site there; it was stalled for many years and the cost was driven up by planning decisions by the previous planning minister.
And there are the constant delays. Members of this Assembly were at the turning of the sod for Goodwin Village in Monash the other day. It struck me how long it took Goodwin to get to the point where it could turn the sod. That story is repeated over and over again in the ACT. There were the debacle of the long delays experienced by Calvary at Bruce; it was seven years before the project was open to people. And again it was roughly another seven years in the case of Goodwin Village in Monash. These
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