Page 1250 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 29 March 2017
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As a former public housing resident, I am appalled. Appalled, but not surprised. I am appalled that the tenants who built a life around their community in the inner north do not get a chance to continue that. They built a life around proximity of services, and now they are going to find themselves way over on the south side and away from those services that they relied upon.
We know that the impact on some of those Northbourne Avenue residents is enormous. I note that the minister spoke earlier about some where it had positive impacts, but we have certainly heard about negative impacts. We have had conversations with quite a number who have raised concerns. On a broader level, we have spoken to a pharmacist from close to the city centre who is extremely concerned about the stress and anxiety that Northbourne public housing residents are facing. This pharmacist has seen an increase in prescriptions for medications designed to deal with stress and anxiety, the stress and anxiety caused in this instance by being ripped out of your own community. It has also been reported to us that a number of residents who have been moved away from Northbourne Avenue to a location further away are consistently catching buses back to the inner north in an attempt to sustain that link to their community; that community that includes trusted pharmacists, trusted doctors and trusted friends. Has there been—I do not think there has been—enough thought given to the massive impacts on the day-to-day lives of individuals who have been swept away with the stroke of a pen to clear the way for this project?
When the Chief Minister and others were busy selling the light rail vision to us over the past few years, they spoke of opportunity and, in particular, of employment opportunities. I would have thought that those who could most benefit from these opportunities are living right now in those Northbourne flats, particularly if they cannot afford to run a car. The employment options available to them in Wright, Holder and Chapman are much fewer and further between. The community services that were available to these tenants close by Northbourne Avenue are much more difficult to access in Wright, Holder and Chapman.
Alistair Coe and other Canberra Liberals have spoken at great length of the two-speed city that Labor has created. They are right. Canberra is a wonderful place to live if you are making a good quid. If you are on public service wages or equivalent, you can enjoy the fruits of this city. If you are unemployed, if you are on a pension or even if you are just working in a job that does not see you earning anywhere near $100,000 a year, you can look forward to joining the underclass. We have created a city that is too expensive for many of its residents to live in.
I just wonder if we are going to see a copy of what goes down in Washington DC here in Canberra. In DC, the workers cannot afford to live in the city. They just cannot afford to. They commute in from over the river. They are the teachers, the nurses, the police officers, the very same people who are leaving in droves to go to Googong, Fairley and Queanbeyan because the policies of this Labor government do not allow them the privilege of actually living in this privileged city.
The developments at Wright, Chapman and Holder are not just inappropriate in location; I believe they are inappropriate in size. The government talk about salt and
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