Page 2141 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
They are important to the people who live here. If we accept that roads are important we should make them the best roads they can be. This does not mean that they have to be gold plated, but surely the people of Canberra deserve better than the ruts and potholes that they are currently experiencing.
I notice with some surprise the way in which the Chief Minister disdains the issue, how she basically gave a slap to her own colleagues for unanimously agreeing to the motion of the Canberra Liberals last week in relation to Coyne Street and the disdain she showed for Mr Seselja having the temerity to read letters from constituents about roads that concern them. It shows just how out of touch this government is when it comes to dealing with the issues that are important to the people of the ACT. The Chief Minister says, “I can be as relevant in relation to local services as you.” That is what she says; it is not what she does.
Roads should be primarily places of transit, but they are also places of commerce. They should be open to car travel, commercial vehicles and bikes where safe. We see consistent problems that this government fails to correct. These problems are twofold: they cannot maintain the roads that they have and they have no understanding of how traffic should work.
All MLAs in this place are surely aware of constituents emailing or calling us about problems with their local roads—roads that need repair, ranging from McDougall Street in Charnwood to Macdonnell Street in Yarralumla. It is something that affects everyone across this city. While this matter of public importance today is not necessarily a story about your favourite pothole, I will draw the Chief Minister’s attention to what is currently my favourite pothole at the intersection of Coulter Drive and Ogilby Street in Belconnen.
Before the second last big rain event, an enormous pothole opened up there over the weekend. I passed over it. Actually, I did not pass over it. My Peugeot nearly was lost in it. So I rang Canberra Connect to alert them to it on a Sunday afternoon. To their credit, by the Tuesday after I had alerted them to it, this pothole had been filled in. But because of the nature of the work, the nature of the road and the nature of the weather, we now have a very large dip that my Peugeot only partly disappears into every time I pass over it. It has been like this for some two and a half months since I first alerted Canberra Connect to this particularly troublesome pothole. I drive over it just about every day, but it is replicated across the city.
When we spoke about William Hovell Drive, the Chief Minister looked askance that I should suggest the state of the road surface on William Hovell Drive needed attention. That is particularly the case around the Glenloch Interchange and where William Hovell Drive joins the parkway going south. The potholes on that slip lane are enormous. As someone pointed out to me quite recently, if you were a motorcyclist that came around there at night, it could be potentially fatal, as we have seen with the unfortunate and dreadful death of a young man recently on a motorcycle who hit a pothole. A pothole for a car driver is an inconvenience; but a pothole of the sizes that we are seeing around town for a motorcyclist is potentially a death trap.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video