Page 2771 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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concerned that the proposed library at the Kingston shops will not be all that the people of the inner south do expect.
While we are on Kingston we might talk about the Green Square debacle. This is an absolute blunder by the person who wants to be the mayor of Canberra. He wants to be the mayor of Canberra but does not want to do any of the mayoral work. He does not actually want to do any of the council work. He does not actually want to do the roads, does not want to do the footpaths and does not want to do the grass. He does not want to do the basic things that people in Canberra expect the government to be able to deliver with ease.
The government’s attitude on Green Square is really quite indefensible. Their position has changed day after day, hour after hour almost. Quite simply, what happens is that businesses in the area pay rates, as do the residents, and they expect to get services in return. However, under this government, because you live or work or run a business in Kingston, your rates do not get spent on you; the rates go somewhere else and you have got to pay additional money. There is a user-pays system for the grass.
A user-pays system is a policy position that the government might consider. But if you do that, you have got to cut rates substantially. You have got to cut rates so that the money that people are saving from their rates can actually be used in the user-pays system. We are not advocating that for one minute, but if the government is going to charge rates it has got to actually deliver services in return.
Each shopping centre in the ACT is unique. We are not denying that. We are not trying to say that they should all be treated exactly the same because there are different requirements. But for the government to be saying that every single shopping centre must be treated exactly the same way, I think, is really quite absurd. Not all shopping centres have grass. Not all shopping centres have the same sort of lighting as other areas. Not all shopping centres have the same levels of parking. Not all shopping centres have the same amenity of public toilets.
There are all sorts of things which make shopping centres unique. It is for that reason that we have a Department of Territory and Municipal Services to actually manage this sort of thing. If they are not actually doing their job, if they are not actually treating the individual communities as communities, if they are just treating them as separate blocks, then I think there has to be a rethink of how it is managed. I support the estimates committee in their recommendation that the government should maintain the grass in Green Square.
The budget papers were pretty misleading on the subject of the Red Hill and Lyons shops upgrades. It really was not about Red Hill and Lyons shops; it was about all shopping centres. Yet the budget papers clearly stated Red Hill and Lyons. If someone that did not have the benefit of sitting in on the estimates committee read the transcript and go through the budget and see the amount of money they are apparently spending on the Red Hill and Lyons shops, they might be a bit alarmed. In actual fact, it was an error and a TAMS official admitted to that. Hopefully, that sort of error will not be made in next year’s budget paper.
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