Page 1163 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 7 May 2014
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Mr Hanson talked about “the forgotten suburbs”. He was very conspicuous, in rattling off his list of the suburbs that matter, in leaving out the inner north and the inner south, as if they are not real parts of Canberra and the people who live in those suburbs do not go to school, catch the bus or have broken footpaths. Interestingly, though, Mr Doszpot put a motion on the notice paper today—it did not make the cut of Liberal Party business, but he did put it on the notice paper—about the state of footpaths in Canberra’s older suburbs. He put the view that some of them have cracks and uneven surfaces, and that is undoubtedly the case. Right across the city footpaths are affected by vehicles driving on them, often private residents driving on them, and tree roots having an impact on them. This is the job that TAMS is doing, and that is why there is an extensive program of works.
Mr Doszpot then goes on to call on the government to urgently prioritise the older suburbs for improvements. So which is it? Is it the forgotten suburbs that Mr Hanson cares about or the inner suburbs that Mr Doszpot cares about? Which bit of parochialism are we meant to respond to here? I can assure the chamber that the government is here for all of Canberra, whether it is Conder, Crace, Bonython, Banks or Bruce. You name the suburb. It does not matter from where you send in a complaint to the government; the government will go out and fix it—not just in the parochial areas and the ones that Liberal Party members have decided to focus on today. I think the Liberal Party need to have a little party room discussion about whether it is the inner suburbs or the outer suburbs that they want to focus on and which of their motions they are going to bring forward to try and be parochial about and claim a political score. In the meantime, the government will get on with looking after all of Canberra.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, that is entirely inappropriate.
MR RATTENBURY: When it comes to cyclepaths, Canberrans enjoy almost 800 kilometres of on and off-road cyclepaths that allow easy access right across the city. Again, we are working to improve that network of both footpaths and cycleways because the environmental and physical health benefits of cycling and walking are well known and much appreciated by people in this city. I certainly receive many representations from people about these things, and that is why we have that program of improvement.
When it comes to roads, it is important to put our road network in its full context. Firstly, despite the claims that the opposition sometimes promote, the ACT has an excellent road network. It is widely regarded as the best road network in any Australian jurisdiction, a fact confirmed by a recent Engineers Australia report which ranked our road network more highly than those of any other state or territory. We have a lot of roads, we have wide and largely uncongested roads, and we have good quality roads.
In the last financial year TAMS resurfaced 610,000 square metres of road. TAMS will continue to roll out that program of road maintenance year on year. In fact, the agency
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