Page 665 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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Mr Stanhope: I said you were. Stop misleading.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you, Chief Minister.
MR SESELJA: He is sensitive on this, because that is effectively what he is saying. There was no Canberra bashing in what Mr Coe had to say. He certainly read the feedback from the community. What Mr Stanhope is saying, effectively, is that Peter Taylor from Deakin does not have a right to complain. “Don’t complain, Peter Taylor from Deakin.” He wrote to the Canberra Times and complained about the city looking run-down.
He is saying it to others who have been writing to the government, writing to the opposition, writing letters to the editor that they want to see their local government do what a local government should do, and that includes looking after the city, making it attractive and making sure that those basic services are taken care of. So he says it to Elizabeth Teasey from Curtin, who has raised concerns in the Canberra Times. She wrote:
However the grass at the back is at present feet high, going to seed and descending into my back garden, not to mention I can no longer take my grandchildren for a walk out there to see the horses because the grass is higher than they are and snakes are not unusual.
I phoned Canberra Connect yesterday and spoke to the City Mowing Authority and this morning received a call from the contracted mowing service who told me that, according to his map, my section of green strip was only contracted for two runs per year, one in mid-November and one at the end of summer for fire prevention safety.
At 6 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
MR SESELJA: So he is saying to these letter writers, “Don’t complain, because this government is not going to take it seriously.” That is what Mr Coe is doing here today. He is bringing the concerns of thousands of Canberrans to the attention of the Assembly. And instead of graciously accepting those concerns from ratepayers, from taxpayers in the territory, the Chief Minister chooses to go on the attack. He chooses to go on the attack and, in doing so, he is attacking those concerned Canberrans. There are hundreds of letters, whether to Mr Coe’s office, to my office, to Mr Stanhope’s office, to the letters to the editor or to various other forums. People will tell you that the basic services are not being delivered in the way they should be.
Mr Stanhope referred to a survey. He did not mention the bits in the Property Council’s survey that talked about what a terrible job his government was doing on things like housing affordability. He did not touch on that aspect of the survey.
But let us look at where this government focuses its attention, because this is about priorities. This government’s priorities are not about basic service delivery. We can point to the tens of millions of dollars in priorities of this government that have not
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