Page 5002 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 26 October 2011

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(h) that the aged care site under tender is back to back to other blocks without space being left between them for paths and roads.

If Ms Bresnan believes that, that it is back to back, but she wants paths and roads, she has an obligation to tell the community and this place where the space for those paths and roads will come from. And she does not.

She then says in paragraph (2):

(a) address community concerns in Calwell through …

(vii) ensuring that adequate roads and footpaths are provided adjacent to the proposed aged care site before it is built …

The Greens, in their badly worded, contradictory amendment, have ensured nothing but a dismal outcome for the people of Calwell and planning confusion well into the future as to where these magical roads and magical footpaths will go. Will they be in the stormwater drain? Will they be on the easement? Or will they be on somebody else’s property? If she believes in what she has told this Assembly, that they are back to back to other blocks, then she has got, quite literally, no room to move. And that is the problem for the community. Nothing will change as a consequence of this motion. The people of that community have an expectation that their Assembly would endeavour to do something better for them, for the community, for the people that we are here to represent.

We have had a request from the community that a master plan be done. We have had a request from the community that the block not be sold until that master plan is completed. We have had a request from church leaders, community leaders, business leaders, residents of that area, to do something on their behalf and this Assembly, through these amendments, turns its back on those various communities. And what the Assembly does is fail to address the failures of the past and it will now compound those failures of the past into a burden on those who will come in the future. This will take more time and even more money and more grief for residents, the business community and the church communities in that place, into the future.

This is a truly bad outcome for the people of Calwell. Calwell has so much potential. Calwell is a huge hub not just for Calwell, Theodore and the Chisholm and Richardson residents to the north of Johnson Drive, but it also services a large part of the population from Conder, Banks and Gordon who pass by it every day in the 22,000 car movements that the government tells the community come along Johnson Drive and Tharwa Drive. It is the intersection of those major roads servicing southern Tuggeranong. It should be accorded more respect by this place. It should be given better planning by its government.

It should be given greater support by the three parties in this place. But the only party willing to stand up today for the people of Calwell is the Liberal Party. The others will vote for mediocrity, the others will vote for contradiction, the others will simply vote for motherhood statements, and the others in this place will vote for the abandonment of the hopes and aspirations of the Calwell community. They have been betrayed


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