Page 658 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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summer. It revealed the views of residents, in a national survey, and Canberra as being the second most liveable city.
Then you drill down into the survey and the survey questions. The area in which the ACT rated highest, in the view of Canberrans—why they lived here, what they loved about it and what they loved about it to an extent that other cities did not or could not match—was its environment, its open spaces, its parks and its beauty—the very things that Mr Coe has just trashed. The people of Canberra—through a Property Council survey on liveability, a detailed survey of all cities in Australia—and people in all cities in Australia were asked: “What do you think of your city? What do you like about your city? What are the best features of your city? What aspects of your city don’t you like? Where do you think it is that you are not performing as well as you might?”
How did the people of Canberra rate their city? What was the scale in terms of the issues that were at the top of their determination around their views, or love, or the positive feelings or expressions they had for Canberra? It was about our parks, it was about our environment, it was about the beauty of the city, it was about how the city looked. They were the issues that scored most highly in the views of Canberrans—views completely the reverse of those just expressed by Mr Coe.
I travel around Australia, not particularly frequently but frequently enough to have some hint of an understanding and knowledge of all of the capital cities and indeed the other major cities of Australia. I travel to all the capital cities and, as a representative of the people of Canberra, I look and I observe when I drive around. I look at the state of their paths, I look at the state of their parks, I look at the state of their roads, I look at congestion within their roads and within their cities, I look at the level of graffiti and I look at issues around the beautification of those cities. I do not know of a city in Australia where the urban maintenance, or urban amenity, is of a higher standard than it is in the ACT.
Name one. It is a pity that Mr Coe did not. Name a city in Australia of our size, or a comparable size or larger, where you rate the footpaths, the roads, the bicycle paths, the parks, the levels of graffiti, urban congestion, urban beauty, beauty of the environment, trees and gardens as superior to those in the ACT. I challenge anybody in this place, most particularly Mr Coe, to nominate a city in Australia that he believes is better maintained, more beautiful, more desirable and has greater public amenity than Canberra. There is a challenge for Mr Coe when he returns. I look—I look hard and I look objectively—and I do not find it.
This has not, as Mr Coe said, been the wettest summer since 1998. It has been the wettest summer since 1947—the wettest summer in 60 years. That is what we have just experienced—not, as his motion indicates, the wettest summer since 1998. That was the last time the dams were full. We have just experienced the second wettest summer on record and the wettest summer since 1947 and the grass has grown furiously. I think in terms of our perceptions we have particularly noticed it because we have just come through 10 years of drought. So we have gone from 10 years of essentially no grass by this time of year to the wettest summer in 60 years, the second wettest summer since records were kept, and the grass has certainly grown furiously. We have sought to address that. We have applied an additional $1 million.
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