Page 538 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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electorate and I applaud her energy in promoting this. That is her job; my job is to look at the situation for everyone in Canberra but with emphasis on the need for community facilities in my electorate. Woden is in a similar situation to Gungahlin and most of Ms Orr’s points are true in my electorate.
Ms Orr’s paragraph (1)(e) could equally say that the Woden community has made calls to increase the number of facilities in the region to support existing community activities and enable their growth. Ms Orr’s point in paragraph (1)(c) could also be made about the Woden Valley community; it is also an active community. And the point in paragraph (1)(b) about the make-up of the community is the same sort of thing. My point is that they are both communities that need more facilities.
It is well recognised that Woden town centre is in need of renewal. It is in a different stage of its life cycle from that of Gungahlin, and in some ways it is more difficult. Canberra has not yet worked out how to renew places well. We have new places worked out more. Canberra has been growing. We have had a succession of different nappy valleys and we have worked out to a greater or lesser extent how to do those. But what we have not done so well is how to renew and how to change. As a community grows older and its needs change and its population changes, how do we adjust to that?
That is the issue for the electorate of Murrumbidgee, whereas the electorate of Yerrabi clearly has more issues with the growing side. But both electorates have issues with community facilities. It is well recognised that Woden town centre is in need of renewal. I have heard many people in the Woden community say that, and I have heard members of all three parties in the Assembly acknowledge it. One of the biggest problems for the town centre has been the decline in community facilities. These fall into three rough groups: firstly, the types of facilities that might be in a traditional community centre.
Both Woden Valley and Weston Creek have a desperate shortage of easily accessible, low-cost community meeting facilities. Both Woden Valley and Weston Creek community councils are forced to rely on the charity of the local licensed clubs to supply suitable places for their meetings. Weston in particular have made quite a few efforts to go to other places because, quite frankly, they did not really want to meet in a licensed premises but there simply was not any viable alternative for them in Weston. Woden has not moved around the area so much simply because there is not anywhere they could go to.
The Woden Senior Citizens Centre is in urgent need of renewal. I was at a community meeting there recently, and members ought to see the parking. It is quite exciting parking there. They park all over their disabled entrance ramps because there is not anywhere else, and these are senior citizens. Woden Community Service is unfortunately split across four separate buildings in a desperate attempt to find enough space for its activities.
The second group is recreation facilities. The town centre used to have quite a few of these but over the years they have mostly closed. The basketball stadium is gone, the tenpin bowling is gone, the bowling greens and tennis court are gone and the pitch
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