Page 180 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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attributes of the suburb … planning for Lawson … envisages a well connected, integrated and compact neighbourhood, where residential densities are higher than in surrounding established suburbs.
Higher residential densities have certainly been realised in Lawson stage 1 and will be an even greater reality in Lawson stage 2. Residents of Lawson, however, have serious concerns about whether this government’s promise that Lawson would be liveable has been achieved.
Over the past two years or so, the Canberra Liberals have heard from dozens of residents who have raised with us serious complaints about how poorly the Labor-Greens government has planned their suburb and how they have been treated with disrespect by the government since buying their blocks or units and moving in.
My motion today addresses just one of those issues, and one that more Lawson residents have complained to us about than all the others combined: lack of adequate public parking. This is a persistent problem that affects both residents and their guests. The results are easily seen firsthand if one visits Lawson. It is reaching crisis levels especially in the evenings and on weekends, when most people are at home.
Parking is of increasing importance in suburbs and cities. Sometimes people spend longer parking than they do driving. So, when planning, it is common sense to set aside adequate land for parking. Traditionally governments have believed that generous parking allocations provide benefits to residents.
However, this has fallen short in Lawson. There are far too few public parking places for all the homeowners and renters who live in Lawson, let alone for the people who want to visit those residents. This has created a situation of genuine desperation and disruption. The daily difficulty of finding parking has been enough to make living in Lawson an exercise in sustained frustration for many residents. Beyond this, many Lawson residents have said to us that their friends and family have given up on visiting because they simply cannot find a place to park if they do.
I want to point out here that, frustrated as Lawson residents are, overwhelmingly they are not frustrated with each other. Instead nearly everyone has concluded that the chaotic situation in Lawson is a result of lack of appropriate planning in the suburb, a deliberate act of a tired old government that cannot be bothered to provide an adequate amount of parking or, worse, an intentional attempt to force people to give up their cars and be dependent on public transport instead. Yet there are currently no bus services within Lawson. So now the government seems to expect people not to have cars and not to have a bus but just to walk everywhere.
In answer to a question on notice last year, Deputy Chief Minister Berry stated that bus services will not commence until sometime in 2021 or even 2022. In the meantime, the nearest bus stop for many Lawson residents is located on the University of Canberra campus, but they have no formal footpath that allows them to safely get to Ginninderra Drive to cross it. This is hardly the well-connected, integrated neighbourhood that this government sold to the buyers who handed over their life savings. Therefore I call on the government to provide that much-needed
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