Page 3691 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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If this government could get its priorities right and focus on the things that matter, we would have enough lawn mowers to keep the grass cut, we would be able to keep on top of street sweeping and footpath maintenance and we would have a better chance of keeping our roads maintained and having a city that looks like we are proud of it, as well as being the capital of our nation.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Corrective Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for Sport and Recreation) (4.01): I welcome the opportunity to discuss the issues raised by Ms Lawder this afternoon as part of her matter of public importance and particularly to discuss urban maintenance for the people of the ACT. Certainly, the ACT government makes a great effort to maintain the look and feel of this city and puts considerable resources, considerable staff time and considerable focus into the issue of urban maintenance, and the many subsets that fall under that, some of which Ms Lawder has raised today.
I appreciated some refreshing honesty in Ms Lawder’s comments in acknowledging the very significant efforts of TAMS, the fact that they are hard working and also the fact that the behaviour of some of our residents does challenge the government’s efforts. Certainly, one of the things that have particularly come to my attention since becoming the minister is the unfortunate amount of resource from TAMS that goes into ameliorating obstructive behaviour by what I am sure is a small minority of our residents in damaging urban picnic areas, vandalism and the like. It is a source of great frustration probably for the vast bulk of the community. It is certainly a source of great frustration for our rangers and urban services staff who have to deal with these matters and who take real pride in the city and in the work that they do.
Ms Lawder in her opening remarks spoke about receiving representations from constituents. I think all members in this place do, because the day-to-day items are things that people see and they want to see them fixed. I think they can see a pathway to fixing them. Some of the bigger problems are more complex and harder to fix, and I think that is why we get the level of representation that we do.
As I spoke about in the Assembly last week, the government has a number of channels in place to ensure that residents can be heard on these issues because we do take these matters seriously. There is Canberra Connect, which members are very familiar with. Also, “fix my street” is an online service which, again, I spoke about last week, so I will not rehash the details of it. It means that it is very easy for people to get in touch with the government. I get a great deal of very positive feedback about both Canberra Connect and “fix my street”. The fact is that in the vast majority of cases the works are done in a very timely manner and people are pleased with either seeing the works done or having an officer from the directorate contact them and either discuss the matter further or explain why something will take some time.
That is certainly something I have reinforced with TAMS. In those cases where we are not able to provide an immediate solution, there is often a good reason. So part of what I have asked TAMS staff to do at times is just to be in touch with people, let
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