Page 1128 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 6 May 2014
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requests—not to support our budget or to support projects that we think are a priority, but to support a project that the business community thinks is a priority—our requests have not fallen on receptive ears.
We will watch what happens next week in the budget. We are doing what we can here locally to push forward with our planning, our vision. There is always interpretation of that.
In relation to the city plan, this has been a big piece of work, again one that has received support from across business, across the community and within government. There are priority projects, but the building of the city heart, as outlined in the city plan, will take time. We are a young city that is half built. It is going to take many years to get even close to completing this city. It will take time; it will require staging.
If you listen to Mr Smyth and essentially accept the arguments he has put forward, nothing is being done, everything is incoherent and the government has failed to deliver—I challenge that. In my time in this place, the city has changed enormously and for the better. And it has changed enormously because there are more people living in the city.
When I was at university there was a wasteland between the ANU and the Melbourne and Sydney buildings. You made it halfway to the workers club before you could make it into the city, and it was like a day excursion to get there. That has completely changed now, and it is great. It is vibrant. It has got students living there. The restaurants are there. Other small business retailers are opening there. And how that moves forward into city west has been really positive. It has taken 10 years to manage that development.
Yes, there are other parts of the city that need that type of development. With big residential areas like the Metropolitan opening down there, you will see change. It is already happening. You will see that if you go for a walk through there. You see Glebe Park being used much more than it used to be. It used to be a beautiful park with lovely trees, but it was hardly used. Now that has changed.
Change does happen. It happens over time. The priority projects for me are these. I guess we all wish they were more glamorous and exciting and that you could see things happen a lot faster than they do. The first one is about transport and movement, which goes to some of the issues you talk about, Mr Smyth, around City Hill. It also goes around Cooyong, London Circuit and the streets that separate Reid from the city. There are some major transport considerations we have. We have to make some decisions about the role of London Circuit. That will impact on how people get around the city now. It can cause potentially major inconvenience. There is the Parkes Way investigation. All of that is underway. That work is really important and we need to progress that. The redevelopment of the ABC flats, again, is being progressed.
There are five priority projects. City to the lake proposals are being progressed. I have to say that when I was in China and I presented on city to the lake, we got some extremely good feedback from private investors around the opportunities within city to the lake. And there is some of the economic development analysis that has got to underpin the city plan and the urban design framework.
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