Page 1226 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 7 May 2014
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took place in providing the Tuggeranong Men’s Shed access to the Tuggeranong multiuse indoor facility. The site was open and ready, yet the access for the men’s shed was delayed due to bureaucratic bumbling with to-ing and fro-ing between the ACT government directorates.
In addition to the delays experienced with getting access to the facility, the 95 Tuggeranong Men’s Shed members are still waiting for an official opening, which I understand is being delayed because of disability access issues. Disturbingly, there also appear to be quite lengthy delays in payments to people engaged in aspects of the building project in Tuggeranong. It may be appropriate for Mr Gentleman to also seek to fix the outstanding payment issues as well.
More men’s sheds have been allocated in the Community Services Directorate budget for the coming financial year 2014-15. But the community needs to feel confident that the feasibility and design study is going to produce bricks and mortar results, not just propaganda.
We note the recent inaugural men’s shed ACT forum held last month. Whilst the forum was a great tool to enable men’s sheds to come together and discuss ideas and issues they are currently facing, there needs to be some feedback and direction from the ACT government into the future. Given the Chief Minister’s election promise of 2012, it would have been great if she herself had addressed these members and informed them of the progress on Labor’s commitment to men’s sheds, with firm time lines.
Chief Minister, your government has been in office for 13 years. It is time to deliver on projects. Your government has the opportunity to provide significant value to the lives of the members that wish to use these facilities. As mentioned earlier, in 2012 the Chief Minister committed in her policy statement that if ACT Labor were re-elected they would:
… establish more Men’s Sheds, like in Tuggeranong, committing $2.2 million to help community groups establish the sheds for older men, closer to where they live and provide greater opportunity to participate in their community.
There are questions to be asked. When will these sheds be built? Where will they be built? How many will be built? And, importantly, why does it take two financial years to undertake feasibility and design study on this? There needs to be a clear directive that this and other promises will be delivered on time and on budget. We will be keeping this government accountable.
I thank Mr Gentleman for this motion today. We strongly support the men’s shed movement. We will be supporting this motion as, like most Canberrans, we know this program can deliver real and tangible results.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (5.10): Mr Assistant Speaker, I rise to speak in support of this motion, and I thank you for raising it. As you outlined earlier, men’s sheds have become a well-established part of the ACT community and, indeed, across Australia. Men’s sheds are principally emerging out of the community, as you have
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