Page 3452 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 22 August 2018
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across the territory. In total we have 90 commercial shopping centres in the ACT, including 66 local shopping centres, 19 group centres, four town centres and of course the city centre.
The hardworking staff in Transport Canberra and City Services, far from neglecting our local shops, are responsible for and dedicated to their maintenance. They look after the public realm in 90 local group and city shopping centres throughout the city and cleaning of our shopping centres is carried out in a programmed cycle either daily or weekly. This maintenance includes litter picking, cleaning of surfaces, pruning of bushes, lifting of trees, servicing of bins, daily cleaning of toilets, pressure cleaning of paving as required, removal of graffiti from government assets, repairs to damaged furniture including seating, minor horticultural maintenance of garden beds and removal of leaves during autumn.
TCCS staff also maintain and clean 69 public toilets in urban areas on a daily basis, depending on their use. Of the 90 shopping centres around the city, 20 have public toilets which are regularly cleaned and maintained by TCCS.
I certainly support Ms Lee’s comments about hardworking small business people in our local shopping centres. But I would remind the party which often claims to be the party of business that in many cases the maintenance and the upgrades of shopping centres are indeed the responsibility of shop owners. It is a shared partnership. It often surprises and staggers me that the party claiming to be the party representing business often comes in here—and of course government is responsible for some very important maintenance functions—and does not seem to recognise that there can be partnerships here in many instances.
There are also many shopping centres which are entirely owned by private companies. TCCS, I know, regularly has correspondence with them. I do that sometimes on behalf of constituents that have issues to raise about those shopping centres that are managed and owned by private enterprise. Many of those also have publicly available toilets, particularly in the larger group centres.
As I mentioned earlier, Ms Lee’s motion calls on the government to report on the budget allocation for the maintenance of local shops. Every year the government spends over $2½ million on regular maintenance and cleaning of local shops. This year we have allocated $2.9 million.
Historically many older suburbs did have public toilets provided by the government. However, when redevelopments or upgrades have taken place many of the public toilets at these locations have been handed over to the relevant lessee. Examples of these include the shopping centres at Jamison, Manuka and Kingston.
For newer shopping centres, privately developed public toilets are provided by the asset owner as part of the development. It is important to note that the government also provides public toilets and urban open spaces at locations such as parks and sportsgrounds where private facilities are not available.
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