Page 3692 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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them know and give them some information. That is often simply what people want. They want to know that the matters are being taken seriously.
There are a lot of areas that have been spoken of today that I will touch on briefly. I was interested in Ms Lawder’s comment about arriving in Canberra in 1988, when the city looked very manicured, compared to her views on how it looks now. I noted that 1988, of course, was during an era in which the ACT was substantially subsidised by the commonwealth government. In fact we did not even have self-government at that time. Frankly, the ACT was certainly the beneficiary of a substantial commonwealth subsidy. I think other parts of Australia would have been highly jealous of that. We have seen over time that commonwealth subsidy diminish.
Any comparison with any period before self-government should take into account the fact that at that time the commonwealth maintained this city at a level at which no other part of Australia was maintained and that the commonwealth has declined to continue to provide that level of subsidy to the ACT. We need to be mindful of putting on the rose-tinted glasses and saying, “It was all good,” because there was a very different set of circumstances prevailing in that period.
That said, we need to do our best to maintain this city. I can assure members and any members of the public who may be listening to this debate that the ACT government is doing its very best and that TAMS staff are working very hard. Over the last 18 months the Parks and City Services Division of TAMS was put through an expenditure review committee process. I was quite open about that because I wanted to see if there were areas where efficiency improvements could be made in TAMS. I wanted to make sure that the money that was being made available was being used as effectively as possible and that we were getting the best bang for the buck that we could out of using the resources made available. That review in fact identified some small efficiencies, but overall it said that TAMS was operating incredibly efficiently and was a good value for money operation.
Ms Lawder touched on a range of areas today. One was playgrounds. I would like to assure members that playgrounds are inspected regularly in order to ensure that they are safe. Level 1 inspections, which check for safety and cleanliness, are carried out at least weekly in high use areas and fortnightly in low use areas. Level 2 inspections, which are a more comprehensive check of mechanical soundness, are carried out monthly in high use areas and bimonthly in low use areas. Level 3 inspections, which are an independent safety audit, are carried out at least biannually for all playgrounds.
Parents in Canberra can be assured that there are regular inspections and that the safety of equipment in playgrounds is being regularly monitored. The equipment may be dated, it may not be of the same standard as perhaps a newer playground, but with respect to the safety level, the letter that members will receive at times about these issues talks about it being safe and fit for purpose, because for the equipment that was installed there is certainly not a safety issue there. With 489 playgrounds in parks and reserves across the ACT, it is going to take some time to work our way around and update those ones that need to be updated.
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