Page 809 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 20 April 2021
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progressing, and about whether the ACT government had a policy in favour of adaptive reuse of public buildings. We looked at the impact of the Orroral Valley fires on flora and fauna, and we looked at a few crown lease commence-and-complete conditions.
We also looked at several issues in terms of active transport. We found out that cycle and pedestrian path surfaces are not being maintained to the same standards that roads are, and we made some recommendations about that. We looked at waste. We found some problems with the way that waste to landfill is being reported in different metrics instead of in tonnes. We have recommended that we survey our customers of the new bulky waste service to find out what would happen to that material if it was not in the service. We looked at the policies that are leading to a lower number of female bus drivers and made some recommendations about how we might increase that number.
We spoke to the City Renewal Authority about the remodelling of roads and footpaths in Braddon and made a few recommendations about how that might be done to better improve cyclist and pedestrian safety in the area. We also spoke to the City Renewal Authority about contractors and about matters settled out of court.
I would like to draw attention to a couple of our recommendations in particular. We spent a bit of time talking to the Suburban Land Agency, who are doing a lot of land releases in our newly developing suburbs. They are making decisions that we only have one chance to get right, and we need to make sure that those decisions are made right, from the start. We need to make sure we are running those processes in a way that gives us high quality and sustainable development.
Our committee has recommended that the Suburban Land Agency take sustainability into account for all of their land releases in all locations. We want our block and building sizes to be big enough to meet our government targets for 30 per cent tree canopy coverage and 30 per cent permeable surfaces. We need our cycle and footpaths to be well connected to encourage active travel. We need our developments to be built and oriented to ensure they have a low-energy footprint, so that they are comfortable to live in as the climate heats up. We need to make sure that our car parks have separately metered electrical wiring, so that those people in future who want to buy an EV and charge it at home will be able to do so.
With transport contributing around 60 per cent of Canberra’s emissions, we spent a bit of time looking at transport, and I am glad that we did. We have asked for a few measurable targets on our active transport network, such as maintaining our cycle paths and footpaths to 90 per cent good condition, which is exactly what we do with roads. We also want to better integrate those network connections into our new developments, and that will help everybody. It is not just people who ride around who use those paths; it is people pushing prams and people in wheelchairs, and it is most members of our community. We made some recommendations to make the flexibus service more convenient and responsive with the use of an app.
We have called for better coordination of our parks and conservation services and our transport and city services, because both of these agencies have a fairly major role in
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