Page 3445 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 September 2019
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I applaud the government’s recent decisions not to agree to five deconcessionalisation proposals. This was a welcome change from the past practice of agreeing, as far as I can tell, with every single group who ran their facilities down and then demonstrated that the only thing to do was deconcessionalise them and turn them into reasonably high density residential. This has been a huge relief for many people in the community as well as the Greens. As I said earlier, we have been very concerned with the constant flow of approvals over many years that have been converting our limited supply of concessional sites into development land. I give a very big tick to Minister Gentleman and ACTPLA on this front.
Concessional community land is an important part of community life in Canberra. This is the land that used to be provided in new suburbs for groups like scouts and guides, multicultural groups, charities, arts groups and religious organisations. In recent years, very little new concessional or community land has been provided, and a steady stream of decisions has converted existing sites into market leases. This bill and the welcome five recent decisions against deconcessionalising leases are a good sign that the government is starting to focus on this important issue. The Greens will therefore be supporting the bill and the government amendments as a small but useful step forward.
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (11.43): I thank Mr Parton for his words earlier that, as he made clear, supporting this bill requires trusting the Barr government. The simple reality is that fewer and fewer Canberrans have that level of trust in this government. In many ways this seems only fair since this bill makes it equally clear how little trust those opposite have in the people of Canberra.
For decades community concessional land has been available to community organisations on a first-in, first-served basis for purposes that they have determined important to the community. This has been a classic grassroots process where people with common interest have created vibrant community associations and then sought access to a parcel of land in order to pursue their goals. These are the kinds of associations that those who understand community would go out of their way to support.
But the Barr government does not get community. They talk about it, certainly. It is apparently a word that they know, based on how many times they use it, but it is a concept that they clearly do not comprehend. This is evident for a whole raft of policies that this government has introduced that make it more difficult for community organisations, volunteer groups and community clubs to operate. Some of these policies, as former Labor Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has recently pointed out, seem not so much wrongheaded as designed to punish community organisations that dare disagree with the Barr government in any way.
Many in our multicultural communities have come to expect disregard, if not downright disrespect, and when it comes to securing help of any kind they often feel like beggars before this out-of-touch government, spending years asking for the simplest things and having to satisfy themselves with the few crumbs that accompany a ministerial photo opp.
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