Page 1469 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
20 or 30 years—to the public domain. It is not that they want to spend a large amount of money, but they want to perhaps look at improving parking access, improving some signage and just making the place look a little cleaner.
On the subject of cleaning, when Mr Coe and I went to Clean Up Australia Day in Macgregor back in early March, I arrived about a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes before the appointed time. An elderly gentleman had driven down and was waiting to see Mr Coe and me when we arrived, because he was so incensed by an article in the paper where Mr Stanhope had basically said that people should stop whingeing about the state of the city. He was incensed about the lack of cleanliness and the lack of mowing. He was a long-term previous employee of TAMS in its previous orientations. He had been involved in the mowing campaigns in the ACT. He was incensed that the Chief Minister could say that Canberra is looking fantastic. As we all know, it is not. This is the gravamen of Mr Seselja’s motion here today.
This was brought home to me again this week, when a staff member and I visited a constituent who had some problems where someone had complained about the way they were keeping their chooks. I went inside their immaculate yard—an absolutely immaculate yard, with extraordinarily well-kept chooks, other birds and things like that. It was a great garden, where there was not a blade of grass out of place. Someone had complained, probably out of spite because they were not getting enough free eggs over the back fence. I do not know why, but it was interesting to look over into the common land from these people’s backyard. I said to the house owner, “Who looks after the common land out there?” It was clearly common land. He said, “Vicki, the only time it gets mown is when I do it.” This is what people are finding over and over again. If they want something done, they have to do it themselves, because the Stanhope government is not providing services in the electorate.
I cannot let today go by without doing one other thing. Ms Hunter reluctantly spoke in the motion on the budget and, in doing so, embarrassed herself in relation to her electorate by saying essentially that people should not be complaining about the GDE. If the Greens had had their way, the GDE would not have been built at all. It is very easy for Ms Hunter to say that; she does not have to get out of Belconnen every day when she goes to work, because Ms Hunter does not live in her electorate. Mr Coe, what was it this morning? An hour and 40 minutes to get to work from Nicholls? On most mornings, what used to be a 20-minute run is now closer to an hour from Evatt. Ms Hunter lives in O’Connor; she does not have to battle her way out of Belconnen, as Mr Coe’s constituents do and my constituents do.
The traffic delays that we are experiencing in Belconnen are an absolute disgrace, and they are an absolute disgrace brought about by the shiftlessness of the Stanhope government, which would not build a proper road in the first place. We are now in a situation where we are being confronted with more traffic delays because of roadworks that have been forced upon the government because they did not do the job properly in the first place.
Legal aid
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (9.03): I rise to talk about legal aid and some services that are new initiatives. I regularly meet with officers from Legal Aid ACT, who
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video