Page 1946 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 June 2016
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I am also pleased to see funding for specialist outreach health programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services, investment in supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at risk of leaving school, a two-year pilot program to strengthen Ngunnawal culture and history in our schools, funding to support artists and cultural organisations to build their capacity and mentoring and training for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in the ACT public service. Also, importantly, there is a newly funded position to manage the ACT Parks Aboriginal Advisory Group. This was an issue I spent time developing when I was the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for TAMS, and this is an important recognition of the cultural history of this region.
I am pleased that the community sector funding indexation has been set at 1.8 per cent above the CPI and only just below the WPI. This will help our community sector continue to meet their cost increases.
Let me turn to the issue of the rates changes for units here in the ACT. I note this is a one-off adjustment. People who live in units currently pay significantly lower rates than people who live in houses. Given that Canberra is changing and there are now people choosing to live in large apartments for lifestyle reasons, the rates schedule no longer reflects in a fair way the cost to government of servicing people. We need to ensure that rates are fair for people who live in million dollar apartments as well as people in small houses in the suburbs. This is part of the ongoing and necessary tax reform in this city to ensure the sustainable delivery of services over the long term.
I want to turn to transport, an essential issue in this city and one that will be heavily contested during this election year. We need a more compact city, a city where people can walk and cycle and rely on public transport and perhaps not even need a car—or at least not need two, three or four cars—in their household, a city where services are easier to access, amenities are easily available and you get to know your neighbours. We need modern urban lifestyles with high quality open space. We need to end the sprawl of this city. We need that for environmental and social reasons. Every new suburb eats up existing native habitat but it also pushes people further to the edges of the city seeking affordability but being trapped with poverty resulting from the cost of transport.
A Greens government would give an even higher budget priority to public transport. This year’s investment in buses is welcome but it needs to be put into perspective. Ten new buses will replace only 10 of the close to 200 ailing buses that are already past their retirement age. We need all of our existing buses and more, even with light rail, so that the light rail and bus networks integrate effectively, so that we can accommodate growth and so that we can actually achieve the public transport mode shift targets that the government aspires to.
The transport initiatives that the Greens have been advocating for are those that will genuinely move Canberrans towards becoming a more sustainable city. That means more investment for additional services as well as accommodating growth. Expanding the Molonglo and Weston Creek service is a good investment, especially as Molonglo is a new and growing area.
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