Page 3901 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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Assembly. It is certainly core business for the Canberra Liberals, even if this government prefers to spend money on other things. It highlights the hypocrisy of Jon Stanhope, who comes in here and tells us he does not have the money but we constantly see him spending money on frivolous exercises, at best. He effectively says to the people of Kambah and Tuggeranong that they do not deserve this spend. But we disagree with that.
Finally, the motion acknowledges that there is actually a planning outcome here that could be really good with a bit of work. There is space there. You have got the playing fields and lots of car parking at the back. You have the space to make this a far better centre than it is. The opportunities, whether they be for park and ride or all sorts of other things, are there. But you need to do the planning. You need to actually have a think about how you want this area to grow.
If this is not core business then we may as well all go and do something else. This is core business. People expect that the basics will be taken care of by the ACT government. They want health, education, police and roads and they want their local services. They want their local amenities taken care of. This government has failed dismally at that. If the best argument that can be put up by this government after nine years in this place is “it could be worse; you could be in one of the 80-odd other suburbs we’ve neglected” then it is not good enough. Why have you neglected those others? We are highlighting Kambah because it is one of many that require resources. It is one of many that have been neglected by this government. We know that this government is very good at wasting our money. We say: redirect some of that wasted money and put it back into core services.
I again commend Mr Smyth for the work that he has done in bringing this to the attention of the Assembly. I commend him for his very active work in the community for the people of Brindabella, in this case for the people of Kambah and Tuggeranong. That is a commitment that is not matched on the other side. It is certainly not matched by the Chief Minister, who continually shows his disdain and whose response to this motion shows just how out of touch he is. It indicates just how out of touch this government is with the real needs of the community in Tuggeranong. (Time expired.)
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (3.48): I will speak very briefly at this point because I have an amendment which has already been circulated. My amendment is not an amendment to Mr Stanhope’s amendment. It is an amendment to Mr Smyth’s original motion. I understand that procedurally I am going to have to wait until after Mr Stanhope’s amendment has been dealt with to deal with mine.
I have quite a degree of sympathy for the sentiments which Mr Stanhope has addressed around trying to work out what part of the ACT should be planned and what part should have resources. That is basically why I have put in my amendment. It deals with a process that we can actually use to try and keep some of the politics out of planning, so that we can have some rational process for deciding where we are going to put our planning resources, where we are going to put our very limited resources. I will not speak any longer now—otherwise I will be repeating what I plan to say about my amendment. I just foreshadow that, once Mr Stanhope’s amendment, which we will not be supporting, has been addressed, I will move my amendment.
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