Page 2899 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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together, on about page 3 or 4 of the presentation, it says that it is all about unlocking the value of the land between the city and the lake. And then, a line or two below it, it says it is so that we can fund capital metro. It would appear that this is all about funding the train set for Mr Corbell and Mr Rattenbury to play with rather than looking at what happens to the city in the long term.
This is part of the problem with this government. They have ignored the CBD for more than a decade. Such are the frustration levels of the business community that they set up their own organisation and agreed to a levy so they could get some action inside the CBD.
The government is now coming up with a city plan, but again we are doing this with a bitsy approach: “We have done that section down there, so we might get some action down there. Then we will come back into the CBD. We might get some action here. We are going to redevelop the ABC flats, maybe; we might get some action there.” But you really need a statement of principles and intent on how you see the CBD functioning, especially on what the CBD brings to the city, and indeed to the making of the reputation of the city.
The problem for the government is that they suffer from the fact that Mr Corbell was unable to deliver a plan for Civic. We had a flimsy A4 piece of paper. Even Terry Snow, to give him his due, outdid the government. In 2007 we had his concept, which got some excitement going. People hoped that something might happen, but of course here we are now in 2013 and we are still waiting. We had Zed Seselja’s bill to set up a city hill authority so that we could get that part of the city functioning instead of being a park that you cannot get to because it is surrounded by the very speedy Vernon Circle and the so-called car parks.
We need a plan here. We have a government that just seems intent on selling blocks of land, with no plan: “There’s a block of land; we will put it up for a hotel.” But then where are we going to put the convention centre? “The convention centre will be somewhere else.” Why don’t you try and make a concerted effort to make it work? What really fails here is that we do not have that concerted effort.
That brings us to the new convention centre. We have got three sites for the convention centre—potentially on the pool site, potentially on City Hill, potentially down by the lake. What we do not have is real commitment to the convention centre. I have raised before in the chamber, in this place, the fact that the minister has been less than enthusiastic in his support for the convention centre, yet at the Business Council breakfast he said, “If you work with me, we can get this rolling sooner.” It has been on the cards now since Ted Quinlan said, in December 2001, “By December 2002 I will have nominated the site for a new convention centre and we will get on it.” In December 2002 we were meant to have a site. Here we are in August 2013 and we still have not selected a site. We have got a government that really does not seem to understand the importance of the new convention facility for the ACT.
We have got a government that is more interested in its personal projects. Jon got a garden; he got the arboretum. Simon wants a train set. Andrew wants a stadium. Why don’t we listen to the business community in particular?
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