Page 2497 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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Access Canberra is undertaking a review of its accountability indicators during 2016-17. That is on page 19 of the government’s response to the estimates committee report.
Given that the ACT government has made Access Canberra the one-stop shop for the community to access and engage with government services, including reporting foul odours in some Tuggeranong suburbs, I believe—and residents tell me—that it is essential that Access Canberra is adequately staffed and that its output class is sufficiently detailed to be able to assess whether key performance indicators are met.
I will move briefly to tourism and events and Visit Canberra, output 9.3. It creates and implements a range of innovative tourism, marketing and development programs in partnership with local industry, industry bodies and institutions which aim to support the territory’s economic development through increased visitation to the ACT and region. We all know the ACT government has relocated the Canberra and Region Visitors Centre to Regatta Point and I was pleased to attend the opening last Friday. I reiterate that it is a lovely location overlooking the lake, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the reason the ACT government relocated the visitors centre was to facilitate the light rail project by freeing up that site so it can continue with the asset recycling initiative and build light rail.
I will also very briefly touch on the National Arboretum. A Canberra Times article of 4 August this year reported that a major review of the popular tourist attraction has revealed that more than 1,000 trees at the National Arboretum are dead and another 1,800 are in poor condition and need attention. In an answer to a question on notice from July 2016, the Minister for Tourism and Events said that 1,311 trees have been replaced in the past two financial years at a total cost of $39,452. That is quite a lot of money spent on replacing trees. Hopefully it will be managing the trees better into the future so they do not die at such an alarming rate.
The funding for the management of the National Arboretum comes under output 9.6, with a total cost of the output for 2016-17 of $16,707,000. Why have the government not been adequately managing the trees at the National Arboretum? They are putting a significant amount of money towards output 9.6, but we are seeing a large number of dead trees.
Finally, I will touch briefly on international flights due to start in September offering a direct route from Canberra to Wellington and Singapore. What I would like to see when Canberra is marketed as a tourist destination in these cities is that we package together the information about our city to best attract tourists. One of the issues that has been raised with me on a number of occasions is that the Canberra visitors information centre is open in standard working hours—9 to 5 weekdays and 9 to 4 on weekends and public holidays—but people will fly into Canberra on international flights outside of these hours. Where will these tourists go to find out what to see and what to do in Canberra?
The hours seem to suit the people working at the visitors centre, rather than being aimed at what will best suit visitors coming in to Canberra. It is great to have international flights coming in, but we must have the right framework in place to
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