Page 1192 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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Residents in suburbs such as Torrens and Pearce have local shops that could certainly benefit from a bit of investment by this government to bring the area up to a similar standard to that which is seen in suburbs such as Ainslie or Lyons; that is, by making improvements to the walkways, installing modern lighting and refreshing the surrounding landscape. If we begin to look towards some of the larger group centres within Tuggeranong, we begin to see even more needs to be done to bring these centres up to an appropriate standard.
The government are all too quick to congratulate themselves on developing master plans for the Kambah Village, Erindale and Tuggeranong centres, a policy that the Canberra Liberals have championed for a long time. However, they fail to address the big issues today. Need I mention again the concerns regarding Gartside Street in Wanniassa, an area plagued by insufficient amounts of parking, insufficient traffic controls and insufficient action from this government to fix the problems.
I feel that all too often this government is losing sight of the big picture. They are hell-bent on forcing Canberrans out of their cars and onto public transport. They want to build light rail at almost any cost. Yet there continues to be a lack of planning going into the facilities that are needed to support this shift. Canberrans will not give up their cars if they cannot do their daily errands in a convenient and timely manner, and I believe that a focus on improving the facilities in local suburbs is another piece of the puzzle that must be addressed.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella) (6.36): I will not be supporting Mrs Jones’s motion but I will talk about the shopping centre upgrades the government has been doing. The government has allocated $11.5 million towards the upgrade of 12 shopping centres, over a period of time of course. The program aims to improve the amenity in public open space surrounding the privately owned areas of the shopping centres. And this involves improved disability access, landscaping, the replacement of lighting and street furniture and by creating key focal points, including public art and community gathering spaces to increase the vitality and the viability of the centres.
Shopping centres are selected for the program from a priorities list of centres that is prepared every five to 10 years. The assessment considers a range of criteria, including the age and condition of infrastructure, safety issues, level of compliance to current standards, the level existing in the centre and the potential to improve on this via the upgrade. A refurbishment project for a shopping centre involves capital works expenditure over a minimum of three financial years. The forward design stage, which involves extensive public consultation, is conducted in the initial year and is generally followed by final design and construction over the next 18 months or two years.
Just on that topic, I watched the upgrade of the Calwell shopping centre, which is my local shopping centre of course, over a period of time—expanding the car park areas and upgrading the park and ride. We are now building an even bigger park and ride opportunity at the Calwell shops. That was the result of, I guess, a direct call from the shopping centre and residents around Calwell that saw that the centre was getting busier and busier and required more parking.
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