Page 4191 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2019
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They had a blank canvas and the brightest progressive planning minds in the city working together to create utopia. What the hell happened? What went wrong?
This motion highlights some of the planning failures in Molonglo. I want to go to one of the points that Ms Le Couteur made at the end of her speech. I think Molonglo is a wonderful place, but it could be so much better. The motion highlights the planning failures of Molonglo. It is a little ironic, as pointed out by Mr Gentleman, that Ms Le Couteur is the one bringing it forward. Isn’t it always the way with Labor and the Greens that they buddy up and lie down in bed together immediately after an election and pretty much get married with an official document that publicly declares their great love for each other and what they are going to achieve together. Then, as we get to within a year from the election, they play out a fake break-up, leading to a fake divorce, only to join hands again on the other side of October.
Ms Le Couteur is quite rightly publicly raising the enormous shortfalls in the planning and development of Molonglo, but she and her party played a vital role right from the start. What has played out and what has actually resulted from those discussions is not what was intended, but Labor and the Greens had a blank canvas. They have been able to craft this new town centre without having to worry us about us evil Liberals. You did not need our vote for anything. You came up with an amazing vision of utopia, and it has very clearly fallen short of the mark.
Occasionally I get visitors from other jurisdictions who have an interest in planning and suburban infrastructure. When I take them on a tour to show them planning failures, we always go out to Molonglo. We drive around and look at a number of the very things that Ms Le Couteur has raised in this motion. I can already hear Ms Cody suggesting that I am being critical of Molonglo and I am talking the place down, but I am not the one who brought the motion here. When I drive people around and show them, I do not trumpet it. I do not make a “Hey, it’s Parto here” video. I just drive around and show them.
In 2011 Ms Le Couteur was championing the so-called Molonglo cycle highway, as mentioned in the motion. The feasibility study was part of the public marriage document between the two parties. Ms Le Couteur has mentioned that the feasibility study was done, but it is now 2019. I know she is asking the same questions I am in terms of where the cycle highway is. Where is it? Why did utopia not happen in Molonglo?
Ms Le Couteur notes in her motion that the Molonglo Valley developments do not appear to be delivering excellence in sustainable design across all areas of environmental sustainability, social sustainability and transport. She notes a lack of room for canopy trees. There is no room for them. She also notes the removal of all vegetation during the suburb’s construction. There was a dream of a sustainable green suburb, but what Labor and the Greens have actually done in Molonglo is to create urban heat islands, which (a) will create more emissions than your average run-of-the-mill Tuggeranong or west Belconnen suburb, or some other areas that we have spoken of, and (b) during heatwaves will actually increase the real and apparent temperature within those urban heat islands.
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