Page 1728 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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actually having a go at the ACT government for dragging their feet at every opportunity and not actually supporting an industry to get a shop up and running there in Dunlop.
I would like to point out some words said by Gordon Ramsey of the Kippax Uniting Church when he appeared on 23 May 2008 before a hearing of the estimates committee that was examining the estimates for 2008-09, just a few months before the election. He said:
I want to highlight the situation of Sharon, who lives in Dunlop. Sharon’s local community has no community facilities. There is no school, there is no library, there are no shops, there is no school that has been closed that can be refurnished and made available in Dunlop for people there. I understand that the absence of community facilities was a deliberate government policy in the design of the suburb of Dunlop. Sharon attends playground in the park, which is run by Belconnen Community Services each week—that is, at times when the weather does not preclude it from being run, and that playgroup needs to shut down during winter. There are no facilities in which the group can meet in bad weather or in winter, because Dunlop has none. At those times Sharon’s social interaction with other parents, carers and children is lost.
There is not just a commercial interest in there being a community centre in Dunlop. There is also a very strong social interest in there being a community facility, whether it be shops or other facilities, in the suburb of Dunlop. Unfortunately, this saga, as I said, goes back many years. In fact, it was a Liberal member who asked a question of Mr Corbell in 2004 about whether there were any future plans to put shops or a shopping centre in the suburb of Dunlop. Mr Corbell responded on 11 March to a question on notice:
The site is on Lance Hill Avenue (Section 133 Dunlop) and is scheduled to be released at auction in the 2004/05 financial year.
He said it would happen in the 2004-05 financial year. So the people of Dunlop should have their shops by now. The people of Dunlop should have a facility where they can congregate and their social cohesion could be on the rise. Instead, that is not how it has turned out at all.
Let me give a brief time line of what has actually happened in Dunlop. In June 2004 the LDA undertook a site investigation report for section 133, blocks 2 and 4. On 11 November 2004, a site investigation report was prepared. Also in that month, Mr Corbell was provided with a brief regarding the proposed land release. Then later that month a community newsletter was put out by the ACT government which talked about the proposed shops. It also says that “the ACT government intends to sell a parcel of land to allow for the development of a local shopping centre in Dunlop”.
However, of course, it did not quite happen when it should have. On 17 November a community consultation paper was released. About six months later draft leasing and development conditions were prepared. These L and Ds did receive a number of responses—positive and negative—and some proposed changes.
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