Page 1740 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 May 2013
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in parking supply to address such shortfalls in the area could be implemented to alleviate capacity problems during peak times. The SMEC report also recommends further decentralisation of car parking in the area, which indicates that it favours the construction of car parking spaces for a specific purpose—in this instance, the church.
It should be pointed out that the church has also offered to make arrangements to grade at their own expense the area they have requested to utilise in order to offset the issues currently being experienced in the area and ultimately provide additional parking spaces to parishioners and shoppers. At the very least, according to the Erindale group centre master plan, the utilisation of this adjacent land would not occur in development in the first stage, which spans five years. In the second stage, however, the plan indicates that this land will be turned into car parking space after this five-year period anyway.
I move this motion today because I believe it is important that we see these issues resolved. When we look at the issues around Erindale, there are much broader issues to deal with. As I noted earlier in my speech, that is why we put forward plans to improve the situation in other areas of Erindale, to immediately provide more car parking in the area but also to provide better amenity. Certainly the Canberra Liberals want to see that occur. While that is occurring—and there is no guarantee under this government that it will—we need to deal with issues as they arise. We should not be waiting for the completion of a master plan before we deal with traffic problems in various places in the group centre. We offer this as a solution, something that will take some of the pressure off parking spaces on the northern side of Erindale. I commend the motion to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Housing, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for Ageing) (3.50): I thank Mr Seselja for raising this motion today. This is actually one of those interesting issues that cross over several government agencies. ESDD, for example, is managing the Erindale master plan, and I understand Mr Corbell is going to talk about that in a moment. Parking policy is primarily managed by JACS, and then TAMS is of course responsible for implementing physical parking changes and is involved in assessing areas for issues such as safety and appropriateness, from a technical and engineering point of view.
Mr Seselja’s motion would require examining a piece of land and assessing whether it is appropriate for parking, which is an exercise that TAMS would undertake. So in responding to Mr Seselja’s motion today I am happy to lead off and to state the government’s position, but I will focus mostly on the TAMS issues. I am happy to support this motion, and to that end I have also indicated to Mr Seselja that I will suggest some minor amendments which go to just some timing and scope issues. The amendments change the language slightly so that it will reflect the nature of the investigation that the government will undertake. I do also propose extending the time allowed to conduct this investigation. That is simply a case of ensuring we can do it properly, which will require some time, and I would prefer to do it properly rather than rush the investigation.
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