Page 1168 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 7 May 2014
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and build community. Instead many of these local shops have been allowed to run down and become something of an eyesore for the community. They should be a place which people want to repaint and revamp. They should be at the heart of a vibrant community. As a smart community we should look at those shops and see real potential for a stronger, better and more positive local shopping zone where children can play and parents and the elderly can meet and experience community.
These areas in some cases are in need of basic maintenance and certainly attention. These local shops should be a community hub. There should be an environment in which people are happy to gather. Instead people have told me that they feel embarrassed and stressed and they do not want to visit their local shops, which is hardly helpful for local small business owners struggling to survive.
Then there is the ongoing problem of derelict petrol station sites. Thirteen unlucky suburbs have fenced-off and boarded-up sites that once housed a petrol station. Many of these sites have been left derelict for over a decade, whilst this government continues to collect money from ratepayers who have no choice but to live alongside sites that look like downtown Detroit. There should have been action years ago. These sites could have been landscaped, even without building on them. It does not have to be an expensive matter. There are solutions. But a government has to try to find them in order to do so.
Local children’s playgrounds in the suburbs are also somewhat lacking. The minister stated in November last year that TAMS has a regular program of playground safety inspections which incorporates assessing maintenance, vandalism or cleanliness across the 507 playgrounds. I do not dispute that, but no effort is put into ensuring that equipment is age appropriate or that there are some fenced parts to ensure the safety of children and the mental health of parents and carers.
Many people speak to me about their concerns about graffiti. Up and down Hindmarsh Drive, for example, on fences, on the sides of buildings, even on the cliff-like rock faces, there is graffiti. It seems never to be removed by the government, and there is not even a policy to reduce the attractiveness of graffiti, as far as I can find. Many residents in Weston Creek tell me how they have worked to be able to buy a home in the area, only to find that they are facing, out their front door, fences covered in graffiti, or they have to drive past large sections of the suburb that have been spray-painted and are never cleaned up.
People have given up on this government being able to do better in this area. But I still say to them that I believe that governments can. I believe that there should be systems which encourage cleaning up graffiti, even if there are community groups involved. I do not believe that community groups would mind being involved. But it needs to be addressed.
The government have a dysfunctional approach to planning as well. This government are so focused on city to the lake and their grand plan that they are continually forgetting the front door to the bus stop or the front door to the local shops.
While we are talking about what could be done better, some older residents are suffering in my electorate from a green ideology which now controls TAMS decisions.
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