Page 1522 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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formed part of the 2012 ACT Labor sports policy. These additional irrigated parks will be subject to future budget appropriation.
Access to outdoor recreation areas encourages healthy living through physical activity and social connectedness. An active lifestyle can reduce the risk of preventable disease, including coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, obesity and some cancers, and may also lower blood pressure and prevent falls in the elderly. Outdoor recreation areas can also stimulate people to get more involved in community life and strengthen social networks.
Rising rates of overweight people and obesity require a multifaceted response. The built environment is influential in either encouraging or discouraging active living. Active living has been defined as a way of life that integrates physical activity in daily routines. Good design and people-friendly places can promote active lifestyles, and this includes active recreation.
Investing in various outdoor recreation areas, including skate parks and off-leash parks, will attract different sections of the community to enjoy recreation, but it also increases levels of physical activity. This appeals to older residents, families enjoying recreational parks with their children and other families, and young people who are increasingly engaged in passive forms of recreation.
As I previewed at the start of my speech this afternoon, I am pleased to be able to move this motion in order to talk about public places such as parks and green spaces as a symbol of the positive role that government plays in our society. Last night’s budget was a sign that the federal government does not believe that the state can play a positive role in society. Clearly, this is wrong. It is based on the idea that everything is judged on its economic rationalist credentials, and that is simply not how normal human beings live their lives, or how people interact in their communities.
Parks, playgrounds, sporting fields, dog parks, skate parks and walking tracks would almost never be considered viable if we only based our decisions from an economic rationalist perspective. It simply would not happen. But we know that people are more than the sum of their economic parts, and that they need public spaces in which to socialise, to exercise and to enjoy leisure time.
By supporting this motion today we in this place are recognising that governments have a wide-ranging role in our community, and I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (6.04): The opposition welcomes the opportunity to talk about what we on this side of the chamber would call core business. The opposition firmly believes in the role of the ACT government doing things that would traditionally be council services.
It is very easy sometimes in this style of government that we have here in the ACT, with a combination of both state and local responsibilities, to wholly focus on the state government responsibilities; meanwhile those core duties of the local jurisdiction sometimes can be forgotten. They can be dwarfed by the big end of spending. The
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