Page 849 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018
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Mr Hanson and other people have talked about the playground in Chifley. From the point of view of the electorate of Murrumbidgee, with the exception of the absolutely wonderful adventure playground down in Kambah, which I used to drive my daughter to because it was so great, Chifley is seen as the gold standard in Woden and Weston for playgrounds.
What can I say? I do not think we are in a position to fund a Chifley playground where all the existing playgrounds are. I note that that is not what the Waramanga people are looking for. But the issue is: where do we put our money? Where do we put our priorities? This is a really important community issue. Waramanga have worked on it, but they are not the only community.
As is noted in my amendment, there have been a number of other petitions go to this Assembly in this term. We are not even halfway through this term, but we have had petitions from Greenway, Torrens, Higgins, Farrer and Giralang, as well as the Waramanga petition, which was an out-of-order petition. There may be some other out-of-order petitions which I have missed because they were out of order, and thus not on the Assembly’s website, so I would have to look through Hansard for them.
I would also note that on average the ACT government has built five new playgrounds each year for the past six years. We have not given up on it. What we are talking about here really is a question of determining budget priorities. It is not a question of whether or not the Assembly thinks that playgrounds are a good idea. If we voted on that, we would, I am confident, have 25 of us voting. More playgrounds are a good thing. That is the motherhood statement which we are all in favour of. The issue before the Assembly right now is whether it is appropriate for the Assembly to say that we have enough information and it is our position to say to TCCS that this is the most important playground—
Mrs Jones: Absolutely, 100 per cent. Our electorate needs these.
MS LE COUTEUR: I am afraid that I do not agree with Mrs Jones. She may have that information, but I do not have that information. I do not have the information about other possible playgrounds in Canberra and the needs. I have a fair idea about my own electorate. I have very little idea, I am afraid—I do not have a commensurate idea—about the other electorates.
This is why, when we get to the “calls on” part of my motion, we are talking about much better community engagement strategies and so on. The amendment calls on the government:
… to investigate community engagement strategies to connect communities with the future of their local infrastructure and guide local priorities, through deliberative democracy mechanisms including the Better Subjects project and conducting a participatory budgeting pilot no later than the 2019-20 Budget cycle …
Last year we passed a motion for a participatory budgeting trial for part of the TCCS budget. This sort of issue is the reason that we as the Greens feel so strongly that we need to explore new ways of getting community consensus as to where we
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