Page 3693 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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With respect to the comments about grass, of course, the number of grass complaints has gone up recently because we are right at the beginning of the boom grass season. With that first mow it is a delicate matter of waiting for the grass to start growing and then getting in as soon as the spring growth really hits. Again I can assure members that the mowers are going flat out at the moment and that there is a very steady program of grass mowing. Irrigated grass in town and district parks is mowed every one or two weeks. These are the high use areas where most people go. I have no qualms about focusing on those areas rather than, perhaps, on a bit of grass along the edge of the road. Sportsgrounds are mowed at least once weekly. Dryland grass in suburbs, including the edge of arterial roads, parkland and laneways, is mowed monthly during peak growth and two to three-monthly during the rest of the year. Other mowing takes place for hazard reduction burning, which is an entirely different category. TAMS is entirely transparent about this, with the mowing program being placed on the website.
Graffiti is something on which I am often approached by people. It is something that I know really agitates some people in the community. Again, significant effort and resources are committed to this budget allocation. The approach taken is that the ACT government removes graffiti from public assets within five days of it being reported or within 24 hours if it is deemed offensive. High profile public assets are inspected weekly for graffiti. When graffiti is on a private asset, this is a more problematic area. It is not the government’s responsibility to remove it, but TAMS does seek to work with the leaseholder or householder to both seek their assistance and assist them by providing advice on how to remove graffiti. The government has a number of steps in place to prevent graffiti which I am happy to go into at another time.
There are things that need maintenance across the city all of the time on an ongoing basis. TAMS has a range of preventive and proactive steps in place in order to do these things. With something like footpaths, all suburbs are inspected on a rolling basis, so that there is a long-term maintenance program and there is also a reactive response if somebody rings up and says there is a dangerous issue.
I know people sometimes wonder why marks stay for so long. If something is an immediate danger it is dealt with very quickly. We also seek efficiencies through batching works, and that is why sometimes paths will be marked for a period of time until that suburb is batched up into a contract.
I note that there is a real theme coming through from the Liberal Party: “Imagine if the light rail money was being injected into (insert favourite cause here).” Today it was urban services. I would also like to make this observation: imagine if we do not invest; the road maintenance costs and other costs are going to be highly expensive. We will no doubt get another chance to prosecute that tomorrow with Mr Coe’s weekly light rail motion.
On climate change, with the impact of climate change in the past summer we saw roads in car parks melting and buses breaking down in the heat. If we do not tackle climate change seriously with things like our 90 per cent target, the cost of these things will simply go up. (Time expired.)
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