Page 654 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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I believe that this government has dropped the bundle as far as the mowing program is concerned. Many Canberrans contact my office expressing frustration at public land near their houses which has seemingly been let go. In 2006 Catherine Carter wrote in the CityNews:
Government ministers think ‘we can afford to let things go a bit.’ But things have been let go too much—and as a result there is a backlog of catch-up maintenance and renewal. This extends beyond prominent parks and public places to more routine sites, such as roadside verges, centre strips along major traffic routes and indeed to road surfaces generally.
Things have only got worse since then. This is after TAMS was established to make the necessary reforms to streamline operations. On the establishment of TAMS in June 2006, Mr Stanhope said:
The measures announced today are designed to maintain or improve outcomes for the community, while reducing many of the overheads and the duplications associated with maintaining a large number of small structures.
The government has failed. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Dr Hawke slammed these changes and said that TAMS had failed. He said, on page 169 of his report:
Removing non-municipal functions would allow TAMS to focus on its core service delivery responsibilities and provide clearer purpose, identity and funding arrangements for the Department.
In effect, Dr Hawke has said that TAMS should be wound up and that an urban services agency should be re-established.
When Mr Stanhope addresses this motion, he is going to try and bamboozle members and others by rattling through the numbers of hectares that the territory is responsible for, the equivalent number of football fields it represents, the public land per capita and the size of the mowing army and making a comparison with other jurisdictions. He will probably say that we have 5,000 hectares of grass to mow, 1,325 urban open spaces, 12 lakes and ponds, 33 sites that make up the Canberra Nature Park, 630,000 urban trees, et cetera.
I will not challenge him on these figures. After all, they are well-founded facts. However, what I do challenge him on is that the situation has not changed of late. Canberra has always been the bush capital and we have always had a large amount of public land to manage. What has changed is the priorities and the government’s commitment to delivering on core services to Canberrans. Rather than harping on about the enormity of the landscape, the Chief Minister should work on a long-term strategy for returning the appearance of our city to the way it once was, whilst getting on with the immediate job at hand. Canberra is a great place, but it could be so much better.
Whilst this summer was the wettest since 1998, and there was increased demand, the fact that the mowing program is largely outsourced suggests that there should be an
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