Page 889 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2016

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I draw members’ attention to other professionals operating down there in the art space. Karim Haddad operates the Tharwa forge. He has carved out very great niche in blacksmithing knives. Very rarely is there a weekend when there is space to undertake one of his classes. Yet there has been an absolute lack of tying together all the different aspects that exist down in Tharwa. You have got Outward Bound on the doorstep. It is the gateway to the Namadgi National Park. Just up the road from the Namadgi visitors centre is the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station that was destroyed in the fires but it is where some of the first images of the Apollo mission were beamed from.

In the northerly direction, we have the deep space tracking station, Corin Forest, a number of dams and the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. All the way up that Murrumbidgee catchment there is so much opportunity and potential that is simply not being recognised. The intent of this Tharwa master plan is to encapsulate some of those opportunities within a village plan. That is what the residents need. That is what the residents are hoping for. But what they feel is going to happen is that there will simply be a token gesture in the approach to an election—where the government is looking fairly—to try to appease some of the community by saying, “We have done something down here.” But it is too little, too late.

Residents down there have been fighting for some very basic things—just to have the water tank that was funded by the community many decades ago renewed or replaced. That is a very small capital outlay that is seemingly impossible to get any government support for. The question has to be asked: why? Why does Tharwa not matter to the ministers in this government, to the backbenchers in this government?

For too long residents in Tharwa have been forgotten, much like the residents of all the southern part of Canberra, Tuggeranong particularly. There is a great sentiment that they have been forgotten. Priorities lie elsewhere, and that is evidenced by projects such as the tram going into Gungahlin, a cost that all Canberrans are going to be burdened with. Yet those in the southern parts of Canberra will be suffering as they pay to fulfil that cost obligation for no direct benefit.

I would simply ask those members opposite to give Tharwa in this instance, but also the southern parts of Canberra, the priority, the attention and the focus they need and treat them equally as they do all parts of Canberra.

Question put:

That Mr Gentleman’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

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