Page 245 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
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power station; the upgrade to Karralika that was dumped on the community over the Christmas break; the absolute fiasco over the remediation of the Tharwa bridge and the general appalling treatment of the village of Tharwa; the delay in duplicating Tharwa Drive and providing adequate access to the Lanyon Valley. The lack of a vision for Tuggeranong really does impact on the people of Tuggeranong in particular.
The issue of the Tharwa bridge is worth discussing, because I think it is symptomatic of the way the government has treated Tharwa, and the need for this motion today. It is a very sorry saga and it does highlight the appalling treatment of Tuggeranong by the ACT government. The project started as a relatively short repair project in 2006, and as the extent of the deterioration of this historic Allan truss bridge became apparent the government, through the then minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Mr Hargreaves, decided to abandon the bridge and replace it with a low-level crossing. There was a huge amount of community anger at this decision that eventually led to the government reversing the decision and committing to preserving the form of the historic bridge.
In the meantime there was the plan for a totally new bridge, but they wanted to use modern materials and techniques in association with traditional materials to effect the repairs. The backflip was not without controversy and the former Chief Minister actually accused the people of Tharwa over the debacle. He blamed them for changing their minds—something that was not true—and again it just reinforced the lack of commitment to the valley.
The original cost of this project was $10 million in June 2008 but as a consequence of the poor decision making by the ACT Labor government it became $14.7 million in September 2008. Two years later in September 2010 the project was still underway, with an additional $6.1 million having been added to the cost in the interim. Then in June 2011 a further $4.2 million was added to the project cost. We have seen this before with so many projects: the cost blows out, the time frame blows out and the scope changes; it is diminished, it is broadened, whatever. But a $10 million project had taken five years to build and in that time the cost escalated from $10 million to $25 million. But what has not been included in that is the human cost of people being forced to detour on a road that was less direct and, because of certain curves and the alignment of the road, proved to be quite deadly.
Tuggeranong is a major community within Canberra. Its residents in the community in general deserve better from this government. I think a good point to start this work would be to make Lake Tuggeranong a valuable community asset instead of a rather smelly addition to the town centre. This issue was raised and I think the way that the Tuggeranong Community Council has responded has been a great effort. The community will do its part, but some of this will be beyond the community, and indeed some of this is not for the community to do; it is the job of government to ensure that the systems work.
So some of the issues raised at Tuggeranong Community Council would be upstream. We all understand there is some work being done on the Tuggeranong Homestead site, but upstream of that again is it possible to put something in that would slow the flow of water and be a pollutant trap? We know the issues of having cities on waterways
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