Page 4195 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2019
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a little concerned that some of the preamble to this motion implies that our new suburbs are less than grouse.
Mrs Jones: Go doorknocking, Bec.
MS CODY: I do, all the time. Yes, the trees in our new suburbs are not yet forming a canopy. If you look at pictures of the Woden Valley in the 70s you will find the same thing. Trees take time to grow. I am sure Ms Le Couteur is aware of that, and that is twice today her horticulture background will feature in debate, without wishing to pre-empt debate, Madam Speaker.
More seriously, we know that we have some building quality issues in Canberra. This motion seems to wander up to but not quite address those issues. Fortunately Mr Ramsay is addressing those issues. This government is aggressively combatting dodgy developers whenever and wherever it can.
The other thing I say about this motion is that it appears to be having a crack at transport in Molonglo. Perhaps Ms Le Couteur is looking at a different map or different patronage figures than I am, but if there is one place in the electorate that we share where network 19 is a runaway success it is the Molonglo Valley. The R10 is an absolutely brilliant service. Sure, our friends in the north have a fancy tram, but the R10 is the next best thing. So have a review, but do not trash talk the good stuff: the Molonglo Valley truly is grouse.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.08), in reply: I thank members for their support for my motion, some more fulsome than others. My motion is not intended in any way be anti-Molonglo or suggest that it is not in many ways a great place to live. For those people who got that impression that is not what I was saying.
Mr Parton had it right as to what I was saying: in the Seventh Assembly we strove very hard to build a better part of Canberra. That was the idea; perhaps we were not quite as ambitious as creating utopia, but I was the Greens spokesperson at the time and we put a lot of energy into working with the government to try to create a better, more sustainable part of Canberra. We were truly trying to do it better.
One of the reasons I have moved this motion is that it is a matter of personal regret and reflection for me. What did we get right—we must have got some of it right—and what did we get wrong, because some of it clearly is wrong. I am fairly confident we will continue to develop Canberra regardless of the outcome of next year’s election, and we need to learn the lessons from this development. I genuinely believe it started with the intentions of creating a better, more sustainable development than we had in the past. It is in everybody’s interests to learn lessons from what we have done.
I am not saying that Molonglo is not in many ways a great place to live; I am saying that in Molonglo an effort was made to do more sustainable developments. Did it work? Clearly in some ways it did not. So how can we do it better? We are continuing to develop and we have to learn from our mistakes.
Mr Parton: Redefine “grouse”.
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