Page 5513 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009
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all three parties agree that the opportunity exists—and if we can get the community to have some input, there is an opportunity with, I suspect, very little effort, particularly on Gartside Street, to rectify that. We will have to talk to the business owners and the government and work out who owns what.
But that street, as a two-way street, is an absolute disaster. If you are there on a Friday night or a Saturday night, indeed probably most nights now, it is an absolute disaster. If you want to enjoy the amenity of the 28 degrees that it was in Tuggeranong at about 7 o’clock last night and sit outside, you cannot because it fronts directly onto the car park. The sidewalk itself is not wide enough to accommodate a decent number of tables in a safe manner.
There are a number of issues here but it is a great opportunity to get this right, particularly with the tripartisan support, and actually give something quite special to that very central area that is Erindale.
There are movements afoot in regard to the ownership of the buildings around the Erindale centre: the building next door, the Allen’s building, and the Oriental Terrace, the Chinese restaurant. Again, it would be good if we could get a boardwalk or walkway next to the Erindale centre down to the college, which, of course, contains the library and the sports centre. There are a number of places here that can be developed. There is an immense amount of potential that can be unleashed and there is a great deal of good that we can actually do in this case.
I seek leave to move the amendment circulated in my name.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: You cannot do that yet. We have to deal with Mr Barr’s amendments first.
MR SMYTH: Until we have done that, I foreshadow the amendment. It makes it quite clear what we expect of the minister. I have shown this to the minister and his office. Particularly, I foreshadow paragraph 2(ba)(v), which is the need to redevelop the area around Gartside Street to enhance this as a restaurant precinct. There is a very rare opportunity and it exists now. We should get this right. I have talked to all the retailers there. There is a lot of goodwill for this to happen.
People who use Erindale regularly do appreciate the ability to come down from Wanniassa, across from Fadden, up from Monash, Gilmore, Gowrie and Chisholm to use this area. It is a nice area and if we can get this right that will be a good thing.
The other area that I would like to talk about is subparagraph (ii) of my amendment which talks about an appropriate policy governing infill proposals. We have two recent proposals in the last 18 months or so—one in Monash, to the south of Erindale, and one in Wanniassa, on McWhae Circuit—where large-scale developments were touted, simply because they are quite close to Erindale. Both of these were within walking distance of Erindale and, in that regard, have a great deal of merit. But the surrounding population is saying, “We do not want our amenity destroyed in facilitating the increase in density in the area surrounding Erindale.” Particularly in relation to that matter, I think we have got to get that right.
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