Page 3510 - Week 11 - Thursday, 19 September 2013
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or is there a complacency in our administration? The Newell Highway between Moree and Boggabilla is frequently mown, and it is a pleasure to pass. What went wrong here?
I think we have all heard the complaints. I know that we have all read them in the Canberra Times. But then a group like the Business Council last year made comments in an article headed, “Business Council laments tired national capital”. The article states:
“Canberra is beginning to look tired and dirty,” the Council said. “Grass has not been cut or trimmed regularly. Rubbish accumulates in alleyways and shopping precincts, and streetscapes are in need of renewal on the major roads and parkways.”
That is a range of the comments. There are many more that people are making. It may be about abandoned petrol stations, and we have questions as to whether or not they are compliant with the petrol station policy. We have had questions in this place about shopping centres and the accumulation of bird droppings, the lack of paint and dead garden beds. Playgrounds used to be a real gem for the people of the ACT. But when they are damaged they take so long to fix or they are just left damaged. They are unpainted. There is broken glass.
Pavement and footpaths are cracked. Often the footpaths are ground down, but the cracks remain and they crack again. Of course, there is the contentious area of mowing. The 75 to 80 millimetres of rain that we have had this week will add to that problem in the coming months. It is about the look of the city and how the city feels for people when they live here. It is about street sweeping. I know a lot of people will tell you that they have never seen their street swept. We are told they are swept at regular intervals each year, but are they? Is the job being done? Is it adequate?
It is about the state of the roads. It is about vegetation, some of it on private property, some of it on public land. Certainly some of us will remember the glory days of the 1960s and the 1970s under the federal government that had an excess of money, it would appear. Everything was neat and pretty all the time. How do we get to that state again where there is some real pride in the way the streets look so that people, when they visit, can say, “Yes, this does look like the national capital”? How do we get that right? I am sure others will take up that theme.
The government did have a solution to that sort of local urban decay. It was a thing called the urban improvement fund. The urban improvement fund came from the lease variation charge. All that money—the supposed $25 million a year that was to be raised—was going to be hypothecated to an urban improvement fund. The Chief Minister commented in February last year, “The results will be noticeable.” The Canberra Times of 21 February 2012 stated, “Upkeep hinges on the Urban Fund”.
She was right. The results have been noticeable for what is a failure in delivering to Canberrans better local services. It is certainly not a success. The industry has characterised this fund by saying that it is “a complicated and unworkable new way to fund the maintenance and upgrade of municipal services which the community expects to be covered through the rates and land tax that we all pay for these services”. That is from an article at about the same time.
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