Page 3642 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 September 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The forum suggested some creative and insightful recommendations to set us on the right path, such as community education and using our eyes on the streets to report illegal dumpers. Our ACT government is forging ahead on progress in waste management issues and takes illegal dumping seriously. I welcome the innovative recommendations from the citizens forum that will lead to action in this space in the future.
Canberra’s road network was also listed as having a high strategic importance for the community in the better suburbs statement. Prioritising the maintenance and construction of quality roads and embracing new technologies for road surfacing are clearly very important to the community, and these surfaces help to maintain a safer and more livable city. As the Minister for Roads this is also something I am committed to improving, in partnership with the community.
A number of other recommendations were also made in the statement in respect of public spaces, including parks and verges, libraries, graffiti, streetlights, play spaces, shopping centres and parking in sports grounds. I recognise that all these elements have an important role in contributing to our city, and I welcome the recommendations and ideas of the citizens forum around these areas.
One other area the forum focused on is responsible pet ownership. This is an area I am committed to improving, and important work continues to occur in this area. I will soon release a community survey on dog control in our city and I want to hear from everyone about how we can make sure we have a pet-friendly city in Canberra and achieve high standards of amenity and community safety. The community will see and hear more about responsible pet ownership in the future, and I welcome the forum’s ideas on this issue.
I also take this opportunity to highlight some continued work occurring in the better suburbs program specifically around play spaces in the ACT. A specific forum has been established to give the community an active role in framing the direction for play spaces in the ACT. This will include a participatory budgeting activity to allocate $1.9 million of funding to play spaces as determined by the forum.
This shows a clear commitment to play spaces in the ACT and the benefit they bring to a community. We know play spaces contribute greatly to the quality of lives and to the health and development of children. I look forward to reporting on this later in the year when this work comes to a close.
Last year in this Assembly the government committed to making use of participatory budgeting to help inform the 2019-20 budget and beyond. The ongoing work on funding for play spaces has already provided us with a lot of insights on how Canberrans want to engage with decisions around the allocation of public resources, and we will no doubt learn much more by the time this part of the process is concluded.
Our intention is to draw on those lessons and link them to the important work coming out of the better suburbs forum by undertaking further participatory budgeting work in
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video