Page 2158 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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communities. School students, parents and teachers deserve better, and we will make sure that our children receive the best education anywhere in the world, including by boosting school maintenance by $15 million.
The Canberra Liberals will fix the current government’s transport bungles. Labor and the Greens have slashed dozens of school buses and have closed bus stops and cancelled services across our suburbs. We will restore dedicated school bus routes and deliver a public transport system that is frequent and reliable seven days per week.
The Canberra Liberals will protect the local environment. The current government has allowed shameful environmental setbacks to our beloved bush capital. Newer suburbs are full of concrete but little grass. And Labor and the Greens have overseen a loss of 3,000 trees from our neighbourhoods every year. In just seven years, nearly 11 per cent of our tree canopy was lost. In contrast, only the Canberra Liberals will plant and care for one million trees. And we will not stop there. We know how important green space is for our mental, social and physical wellbeing, so we are issuing a guarantee that all Canberrans, including those in apartments and town centres, are within a 10-minute walk to a properly maintained green space.
Finally, the Canberra Liberals will look after the vulnerable and disadvantaged, and treat people with dignity and respect. This commitment includes the recently announced policy that we will introduce a legal entitlement to restorative family group conferences for all families that come into contact with the child protection system. This approach places the family at the centre of decision-making, and boldly signals our commitment to be a government that no longer makes important decisions for families but instead makes decisions with them.
As I said, the future is full of hope and promise. I look forward to assisting the Canberra Liberals to achieve this vision of a Canberra that is the best place in Australia to live, work and raise a family. Thank you.
Federal government—territory rights
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra) (7.08): Last week marked two years since the Senate voted against restoring our territory rights so that we in the ACT and the Northern Territory would have the power or the agency to decide for ourselves, in our parliaments, on behalf of our communities, whether to legislate for voluntary assisted dying.
I know that, like me, members will remember those days keenly—from the nervousness leading up to the vote, the horror at the vote just failing, and the emotion in this very place as we made history debating and then passing unanimously this parliament’s first-ever remonstrance motion. We were left reeling at the time, but we dusted ourselves off and we have continued to put the pressure on—from another unanimously agreed motion in this place, to writing letters to almost every federal politician asking them to put their views forward about where they stand, starting a petition which is gaining close to 2,500 signatories from across Australia, and creating a website which outlines the situation and the actions people can take to place pressure on federal politicians.
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