Page 73 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 10 February 2015
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At the heart of it, the government must realise that they do not listen to Canberrans’ greatest concern—that is, urban amenity. Most Canberrans I speak to are sick of this government ignoring their concerns when it comes to the bread and butter issues of a local administration, those being grass mowing, footpath and road repairs. The government spends every day in this building thinking up another light rail route or where they can move wind and solar farms to. Instead, if they properly consulted with Canberrans, they would see that this is not the top priority for Canberrans. So many Canberrans want better urban amenity to help us all be proud of our city.
Shamefully, of course, all these desires could happen at a fraction of the cost of light rail. It shows the lack of consultation by this government, and how out of touch they are with the community’s concerns. The light rail project will be the iconic example of this government squandering money and simply fuelling their own self-indulgence on a project that had its genesis in a deal done between Labor and the Greens.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Capital Metro) (3.51): Madam Deputy Speaker, what a curious matter of public importance we have from Mr Coe today. Was it an MPI about consultation or was it an opportunity to provide policy critique from his perspective on everything that he does not like about Canberra and everything he is unhappy about? It is one thing to debate differences on policy and the delivery of projects, but it is another to try to wrap it up in some sort of complaint about consultation.
This government has a strong and wide-ranging program to engage with the Canberra community and talk with them and hear from them on issues of concern and interest to make sure that service delivery is focused on responding to the issues of greatest concern to them. The government has put in place a comprehensive range of measures to effectively engage with the community. That does not mean, of course, that you will always agree with what the government does or what it decides to do. It is the job of government to make decisions and to decide, ultimately, how the city will grow and develop to meet the broader public interest, and not everyone will agree with that all the time—and I know Mr Coe will rarely agree.
But let us look at some of the comprehensive range of measures this government has put in place. We have, for example, a comprehensive digital mail service, an emailing outreach service. It commenced last February and to date it is reaching more than 29,000 residents on each and every occasion it is used to provide information on what is going on in Canberra, government service delivery, government consultation, activities and how people can have their say.
There is the Canberra digital community connect framework. This uses the NBN to provide opportunities for community groups to run online events that people can view and participate in in their own homes. The Gungahlin library is equipped with video broadcast equipment to live stream events through our Canberra Live website.
The government has been actively engaged in using social media to connect with Canberrans. We have used the very effective Twitter cabinet framework as well as
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