Page 3912 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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Mr Barr: Most people in Downer live closer to the Dickson group centre, which—
MS LE COUTEUR: That is one of the reasons, yes. It is one of the reasons.
Mr Barr: would be one of them.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mrs Dunne): It is not a conversation, Mr Barr.
MS LE COUTEUR: It is one of the reasons for the problems, but certainly not the only reason. I think that statement is possibly not factually correct, Mr Barr. Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that there is quite a lot of Canberra which is having concerns about the things that are happening either in their local shops or their suburbs. You only have to read the Chronicle every week, or the Canberra Times on many days, to see that what I am saying is true. We have a widespread discontent about what is happening to our city. This is something that we need to address in a better way than we are at present. I come to that in the second part of my motion. I now go to paragraph 1(f), which states:
… there is no systematic process for involving local communities in the planning processes that are impacting on communities …
Standing here as MLAs, we all know that is true. We are all getting representations from constituents. I am sure that we all have many constituents who are very upset about what is happening close to them. They simply do not understand why it is happening. They feel that they are not involved in any way and that there is no way that they can possibly be involved. They can put a comment in on a DA, but that is not likely to lead to any great change and that is the most they can do. They cannot even appeal and go to ACAT in general, even if they have the resources to do so, because it will be deemed that they live too far away from the development and they cannot say anything. At present the process is not working for the people of Canberra.
Let me move to paragraph 2(a). Our big change here is to say:
… extend currently proposed consultation to include a master plan of the Kambah Village site …
This has already been canvassed to some extent by Mr Smyth and Mr Barr. The government has already told us that it is about to embark on significant consultation in Kambah. The front page of today’s Chronicle tells us this. Given that the government is about to do this, we are asking the government, as Mr Smyth said, to be a bit broader in what you are going to do. Don’t do half the job; do the whole job. Given that the government appears to be planning to do a significant amount of work in Kambah, we are saying: involve the community; plan for the long term.
We have specifically got a suggestion here about the need for a park and ride, because if there is one thing that most people would agree with it is that Tuggeranong has not been well served by our public transport system. It is probably the worst served of any area of Canberra. I suspect that Ms Bresnan may elaborate on that point,
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