Page 4691 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 31 October 2017
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from hard surfaces, offering shelter, reduced air pollution and increased vegetation; and of course supporting the needs of humans to seek connections with one another and with nature.
MS ORR: Minister, what can Canberrans expect to experience in a micro park?
MS FITZHARRIS: Many Canberrans may have experienced it when the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, working with the ACT government in October last year, had a pop-up in Garema Place, which is exactly the place the current micro park will be established before the end of the year. What we found, and what is evidenced through micro parks where they are established across Australia and around the world, is that they are compact, human-scale and intimate places of high amenity. They contain physical elements but also support activities such as reading, eating, sitting and socialising.
Micro parks are designed to create usable public spaces in locations that, as I mentioned, have previously been under-utilised, including of course Garema Place, which is generally viewed as a transient space in our city centre. As last year’s experiment showed, it brought people together and attracted thousands of individual visitors and a huge increase in the number of families and children who visited the micro park. On a micro-planning scale, micro parks support opportunities for conversation, pause, rest and relaxation. They can contain landscaping, vegetation, somewhere to sit, interactive elements and access to wi-fi, power and possibly lighting; they are interesting and attract people into them.
Members might be familiar with other names for micro parks, including pocket parks, parkettes, mini parks, vest-pocket parks and parklets. I encourage everyone in the Assembly and indeed all Canberrans to take the opportunity to enjoy and visit the micro park in Garema Place when it opens later in the year.
Greyhound racing—government policy
MR PARTON: My question is to the Minister for Regulatory Services. Minister, on Wednesday night last week the Victorian Labor Premier, Daniel Andrews, made a speech about greyhound racing and his government’s unequivocal support for it. He said: “We know and understand that it is all about enjoyment, it’s about jobs, it’s about prosperity and fundamentally this sport, given the changes … we’ve seen in recent times, this sport is very much focused on animal welfare …”
Minister, if the Victorian Labor Party and Premier Daniel Andrews can support the reforms in the greyhound racing industry, why can’t the ACT Labor/Greens coalition government do the same?
MR RAMSAY: I thank Mr Parton for the question. The simple answer is that the ACT government governs for the ACT on the values of the people who live in the ACT. It is particularly clear—as we have explained before over and over again, as the government took to the last election and has been maintaining since—on the basis of the communications that we have had with people, that community values in the ACT are that the greyhound industry should be—and it will be—ended. The racing
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