Page 2633 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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facilities provided in this city is generally very high. If one travels anywhere beyond our city, one generally finds that the level of services overall in this city is very good. That said, there is always room for improvement, and TAMS has a big job to continue to keep up with the expectations of the Canberra community in delivering the services they believe should be delivered.
There have been a few references tonight to core services, and a lot of core services need to be delivered, whether it is buses, garbage, roads, mowing, litter, dog control, trees, footpaths, cycle facilities, streetlights, and so the list goes on. These are all core services that TAMS is delivering for our community. It is very easy to come in here and say, “This is a core service,” because there is a very long list of core services which the community wants delivered and which TAMS is working hard to deliver.
I was very pleased earlier this year to see the results come back from the annual TAMS survey of Canberrans, and the feedback was very positive. On the whole, people are very satisfied with the services delivered by TAMS. That is a testament to the hard work by the nearly 2,000 TAMS staff who are out there every single day delivering services across the city. I know there is a real pride in TAMS about the job they do, and many of the staff I meet are either very experienced or very expert in particular areas, whether they be arborists, rangers or road engineers. They take considerable pride in their work, and because we are a small city, people get some fairly direct feedback.
Mr Coe interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Coe, I am glad to see you are cheerful but I cannot hear Mr Rattenbury at all.
MR RATTENBURY: As I was saying, with respect to the TAMS staff, because we live in a small town, I usually get some fairly direct feedback—whether it is from neighbours or people I run into in the street—about things around the city. Apart from all the other channels, there is fairly strong feedback to the staff of the directorate.
In terms of that information back to the directorate, I take this opportunity to reinforce the facilities that are available. People in Canberra have a tremendous power to influence what gets done and how quickly things get done in this town, through the range of feedback services available, whether it is Canberra Connect or fix my street. Both of those services offer a very direct and quick way to get matters attended to.
Unfortunately, occasionally things do fall through the cracks, and that is usually when members need to write to me. Some things do need that extra level of follow-up. But I would encourage members to empower communities by letting them know that those very good and very effective services are available for getting jobs done.
I have said at a range of fora that I would rather have TAMS staff out fixing things than out looking for problems. We have 370,000 citizens of this city; plenty of them are great at reporting things, and I appreciate that, because I think it is a community effort to let TAMS know what the problems are so that we can focus our staff resources on fixing them rather than looking for them. That is certainly the approach that I prefer to take.
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