Page 4861 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017
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Until such time as the new service centre in Dickson is complete, all services previously provided at the Dickson shopfront are available at other Access Canberra service centres. Most Canberrans live within 12 kilometres of a service centre. The Belconnen service centre is eight kilometres and the Gungahlin service centre is nine kilometres from the Dickson shopfront. The Civic drivers licence service in the Civic library is located five kilometres from Dickson. Additionally, from 2013-14 to the closure of the Dickson shopfront, there was approximately a 30 per cent decrease in the number of customers attending the Dickson shopfront. The number of customers attending Dickson continued to decrease when the Dickson motor vehicle inspection station closed on 12 May this year.
With respect to Canberrans wishing to have their vehicles tested, I need to reiterate that they are not always required to attend the Hume facility. Roadworthy inspections may be carried out at one of over 80 authorised inspection stations which are located right across Canberra. A list of these is available to the public on the Access Canberra website. Having the new test station at Hume provides a more convenient location for south side residents—and with it being located on a national freight route, it removes the need for over 3,000 heavy vehicles that require testing to travel through the suburbs of Canberra each year.
I wish to conclude by noting that Access Canberra is here for all Canberrans. Its purpose is to provide easier and simpler services for everyone. Access Canberra is simply here to help. As a government we commit to further continuous improvement on all fronts. As such, we are very happy to undertake the review noted in Ms Lee’s motion to ensure that we have our settings right and to ensure that Access Canberra is indeed easier, simpler and here to help.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (5.27): As the previous speakers have noted, the Greens will be agreeing with this motion. It is a very sensible motion. Access Canberra is something which is seriously useful to the people of Canberra and it behoves all of us to make it as useful as it possibly can be. I will not speak at great length because most of the things that I might have said have already been said by one of the previous speakers, but I do have a few points to make.
The discussion on Access Canberra follows on from the earlier discussion last week on fix my street. It is all part of the continuum of government services and how the people of the ACT interact with the government. Fix my street is more focused on, “It’s wrong; fix it.” Access Canberra is more focused on, “You’ve got to get your form; you’ve got to put your money in,” or whatever. But from the point of view of a resident of Canberra, it is all the same thing: “I want to interact with the ACT government; I want to get something done.”
On that note, I would like to particularly mention a problem with car regos which I have had brought to my attention by a constituent who was stopped by the police, who said that his car rego had expired. His car was put in the middle of the Tuggeranong Parkway and he was not even in a position to walk safely from his car to the side of the road. His point was that we do not have any electronic reminder system for regos. I agree that we do have a paper one. He also said—and it is quite true—that
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