Page 2701 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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quickly. Again, we see this mismatch of delivery to critical infrastructure for those that live in the outer suburbs.
If you continue just in Tuggeranong, the duplication of Tharwa Drive has been on the books now for many years. It has been not delivered for many years. It is underway now. Some of the requests of the community have not been met in the final form that Tharwa Drive will take. If we look at the Lanyon Drive extension to link Queanbeyan and Jerrabomberra down to the Monaro Highway, that intersection has a great impact on people who live to the south of it, and we see a project that just seems to go on forever. So the timely delivery of infrastructure is important. Indeed, the Auditor-General has noted the under-delivery of infrastructure. Mr Harris also notes the under-delivery of infrastructure in the advice that he gave the estimates committee. It is about making sure that we have plans in place to deal with all areas of the territory equally.
Dealing further with roads in the Tuggeranong Valley, I note on the original plans that Isabella Drive and parts of Johnson Drive were also to be duplicated. Whether they need to be built now will be an interesting question, but one road that particularly causes great angst to a lot of drivers and that is the scene of regular car accidents, and indeed at least one death, is Ashley Drive, which connects Erindale Drive to Johnson Drive. Again, the question of when Ashley Drive might be duplicated, or at least made much more safe than it is, is something that needs to be considered. Indeed, there are still a few missing links, particularly for the people of Tuggeranong. The Monaro Highway, where it goes over Canberra Avenue, where it goes from two lanes down to one, is a continuing source of irritation to many drivers who pass that way to avoid the Woden Valley and Civic on their daily commute. This bottleneck causes a great deal of angst in the mornings in particular, but, again, also at night.
It is not just about the road infrastructure. If we look at critical social infrastructure, particularly for Tuggeranong, there has been no action on the Tuggeranong Homestead for some years now. For those that were not here, the Labor Party had intended to subdivide the majority of Tuggeranong Homestead and put residential on that area. That would have been a great shame. Tuggeranong Homestead, in fact, has buildings that come from the convict era, buildings that were built by convict labour, all the way through to a cutesy 1950s brick veneer deco front. So in one building complex you really have the architectural history of residential Canberra, yet we were going to cut that up and turn it into a residential development.
Some work has been done to stabilise the buildings that are currently there, and some small amount of work has been done, for instance, to look at whether or not we should return the creek, which is now a big stormwater drain, to being a creek. Work has also been done to restore the orchard. But in the main it has been ignored by this government. Tuggeranong Homestead is a fantastic area located in the heart of the city that is Tuggeranong with some 90,000 people. But we are not using it to its best advantage, and we are certainly not using it in a way that allows it to be maintained for the use for which it was intended. That is a great opportunity gone begging and I would hope that perhaps when the minister for heritage comes down to the chamber or when one of the members from Tuggeranong speaks to this, they might tell us what the government’s intention is long term for Tuggeranong.
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