Page 4978 - Week 13 - Thursday, 12 November 2009
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must be said that the Menzies Walk, which is being developed and finalised now, is a sensational addition to that. There were aspects of that lake walk which were not up to scratch of what you would expect, and the work that has been done on the Menzies Walk has really made that much more accessible and enjoyable.
So we have got the space, we have got the trees and the grass, and it is a beautiful place to be on a nice spring day or a nice autumn day. But the facilities for people to stay and have a meal or to stay and have a cup of coffee have been fairly limited. We have got Regatta Point and there is the odd little kiosk near Reconciliation Place, but there has not been in much in terms of the lake. We have not utilised this lake, I do not believe, as well as we should. We have not made it the jewel that it should be in the ACT—not just for tourism but a destination for Canberrans. That will be one of the great planning opportunities and one of the great planning challenges of the next few years and indeed of the next few decades.
It must be said that the gutting of the NCA was a particularly short-sighted decision by the Rudd Labor government. There is no doubt that the case was simply not made; that the rationale behind it seemed to be more about a personal vendetta of Senator Kate Lundy against the work of the NCA. The result was that Senator Kate Lundy, in apparently representing the people of the ACT, really did all Canberrans a disservice and did, I believe, the national capital a disservice. For what was a relatively minor saving, the government gutted an organisation that was important to Canberra, with a large percentage of the staff having to be removed in one way or another. That was not a good decision. That will stifle some of the opportunities and some of the wonderful work that was put forward in the Griffin Legacy from coming to fruition.
We have also seen the very short-sighted decision by the commonwealth some time ago to renege on its commitment to the duplication of Constitution Avenue. It was announced in, I think, the 2007 budget that the commonwealth would fund this duplication. This is important for Canberra not only in terms of our infrastructure and our growth. You could make a very strong argument that there is a moral obligation for the commonwealth to duplicate this road, given the construction work that is happening along Constitution Avenue, most of it being, of course, commonwealth construction. So the congestion that is going to be there as a result is as a result of commonwealth activity.
We welcome much of that construction activity. There is no doubt that it is important for our economy. It is important not just in the construction phase but for the jobs that will be in those buildings, including the ASIO building, which I will come back to. But there will be congestion as a result. In the ASIO building alone, I think there will be 1,800 permanent staff. It is a 24-hour operation. There will be a lot of extra traffic and we are going to be faced with a situation, if that road is not duplicated, where traffic really does come to a standstill on that road at peak times.
That was a short-sighted decision. It was, of course, a part of the Rudd government’s war on the inflation genie that they were having early in their term.
Mr Barr: A very successful war.
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