Page 3454 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 22 August 2018
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It is worth noting that during this first phase we asked Canberrans to provide feedback on how they rated some of the city services we provided. Over the course of that first phase we heard from over 1,200 Canberrans—eight who lodged written submissions, 175 people who attended five pop-up sessions, 43 people through your say discussion board and 300 people who engaged with posts on social media. From this consultation, we found that satisfaction with services for shopping precincts was highest within Ms Lee’s electorate, which covers the central districts of Canberra, at 75 per cent, with an average of 72 per cent across all Canberra districts.
The next opportunity for the community to identify and discuss the delivery of city service priorities was through a kitchen table conversation. This encouraged families, friends and community stakeholder groups to gain a deeper understanding of community need. A representative citizens forum panel consisting of 40 community members who represent Canberra’s demographic profile and 25 senior representatives from community stakeholder groups, government and industry has been held. The forum worked to identify and plan for the right mix of city services for Canberra into the future.
Feedback from both consultation activities has been consolidated and included in the better suburbs statement, which I was delighted and honoured to receive from the group just this past Sunday. I very much look forward to the final better suburbs statement, which I actually happen to have right here in front of me. I would like to note, without pre-empting the final tabling of this statement, the very complimentary words that a representative group of citizens has made about city services, because I know that the opposition, when they come in here, are looking to have a crack at the government. I understand that, but every time they do that—and it was particularly relevant to some debates yesterday with the opposition about health—they really take a large swipe at our very hardworking public servants. There are officials in city services who do some of the most diverse work in the territory.
I was so delighted that the community group that came together—nearly 60 people over the weekend—had the unique privilege of getting to know the extent and range of work that our city services team does in the ACT. If you are ever in the city very, very early every morning, they are out there looking after our city. They are cleaning it; they are sweeping it up. After major events like New Year’s Eve or the Multicultural Festival there are staff in city services out across our city every day in some terrible weather—in winter and summer—cleaning our shops, and they really do a tremendous job.
I was very pleased to hear from the citizen forum their view that city services does a wonderful job of maintaining and improving assets across all its service areas. There are opportunities to improve, and we certainly recognise that because, if there were not, probably none of us would be here.
The forum, in wrapping up, worked to identify and plan for the right mix of city services for Canberra into the future. I have also asked the better suburbs citizens forum to allocate the $1.9 million set aside in this year’s budget for playgrounds and local community improvement projects. Some of those that presented to the forum
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