Page 1177 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 7 May 2014
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MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.16): It is very interesting that yet again we have an amendment from the Chief Minister to simply wipe out Mr Hanson’s motion. I think it embarrasses them. If we go back to the early days of the formation of Canberra, you have to ask the question: what sort of city was envisaged? Burley Griffin and his wife, Mary Mahony, said they had planned a city not like any other city in the world, an ideal city, a city that meets “our ideal of the city of the future”. And indeed, the day Canberra was named, the then Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, said he anticipated a city where the best thoughts of Australia would be expressed, a seat of learning as well as of politics and home of the arts. The Governor-General said that he thought it should be the finest and noblest in the national life of the country, “a city bearing perhaps some semblance to the city beautiful of our dreams”. If you judge it even against those starting commentaries about what Canberra should be, this government clearly fails.
I think the list that Mr Hanson has put together is a succinct summary of the key areas of their failure, and it is a list that none of those opposite have put up any credible alternative to or have debunked. I do not know anyone who does not think that their neighbourhood amenity has declined in the last decade, whether it be broken footpaths or gutters that have not been swept, whether it be limbs fallen from trees that are not cleaned up, whether it be the verges that are not mowed. It is an important thing about how you see your city, the look and feel of the place. And what we do not get is a look and feel of a city that is going forward.
We have got that extraordinary quote that Mr Barr or some of his officers worked up and that they are going to peddle, the line that everybody knows that this city does better under Labor governments. I would look back to the late 1990s through to 2007. This city did incredibly well. Yes, the first couple of years of the Howard government were tough on Canberra, but it was tough medicine, unfortunately that we paid a price for, after the economic failures of the Hawke-Keating years and the Follett government.
We do not often mention that in 1993 and 1994 the Follett government flooded the land release market in this city and destroyed the price of land in an attempt to balance their budgets. And we see Mr Barr doing it now. They are ramping up land release because they have failed so spectacularly over the years. If land prices are softening, you have to ask the question why the government’s land release policy fails. We had that example I mentioned yesterday where a builder bought a block of land, and a couple of months later the government released the block next door with a much lower reserve. This is a government that does not do the economy very well.
But let us go to this contention from Mr Barr that the city does better under Labor governments. This city languished under Labor governments, and it was not until Menzies put in place the NCDC in 1956 and laid down the foundation for the great city we have today that things started to move in this city. It was not until people like Malcolm Fraser decided to go ahead and replace the temporary parliament building with the fantastic structure that we have now that lies really at the epicentre of politics in this country. That is an amazing landmark for the people of the ACT.
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