Page 850 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018
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should put our limited resources in terms of building playgrounds, building safe bike paths or building wetlands. You name it: there is a huge list of things that the ACT government usefully should do, and it is not possible for us to fund them all on the current ACT budget. I am not confident that we would find great agreement, particularly from the Liberal Party, for raising rates so that we could fund all of these great ideas.
That is why our first call is for better processes to try to work on these issues. I do not feel that it is appropriate to decide all the budget on the basis of motions in the Assembly; we just do not have the information to do a good job for this. There is a reason why budget cabinet meets so many times. There is a reason why government departments put forward submissions. We are not privy to those, fortunately or unfortunately. I would like to see more, but we are not privy to those.
My second call is to investigate co-funding options to allow local communities and businesses to support infrastructure projects like playgrounds and parks. This is important where a community is in a position to do part of the heavy lifting, to work in cooperation with the government. The Boundless playground has been a wonderful thing, and that was established as a co-funding venture. There was a lot of work done in raising funds from the public for that.
My third call, (c), is to:
… continue to ensure that playgrounds are provided equitably across Canberra and allow all Canberrans to access green- and play-spaces within walking distance of where people live, work and shop …
That goes with what I was saying before: we need an equitable process for distributing our scarce government resources to these wonderful assets of great playgrounds.
My fourth call, (d), is to:
… investigate expanding “adopt a park” programs to support, with both finance and services, communities to improve and maintain local infrastructure …
We have done this quite a bit in terms of our nature parks. I have been part of many groups which have been weeding and planting trees in the nature parks which are adjacent to our residential areas. It would be great to see more of this within our residential areas. I have done rubbish collection in Eddison Park, which is near me in Woden, but there is probably more that we can do in this.
The last call is an important one. I would like to see the ACT government continue to work with the Waramanga community to develop a way forward for a new playground at Waramanga shops. This is not as clear as Mr Hanson would like it, and I appreciate that it is not as clear as some of the community of Waramanga would like it. But this is simply not a process which makes sense for me as a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly tasked with looking at the best for the whole of the ACT, not simply making decisions on the basis of considerable community input from one small part of the community—a small but important part.
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