Page 1318 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 11 May 2021
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flood mitigations. A major concern expressed to me by local residents is the likelihood that high density housing will be constructed on the playing fields and that after a major flood the people footing the bill will be the residents.
I am not making these predictions lightly, Mr Deputy Speaker. I regularly get emails and phone calls from Canberrans at their wits’ end about houses or apartments with serious building defects and with limited options, short of costly legal proceedings, to have their homes made liveable and safe.
The Labor-Greens government have overseen an epidemic of failure in building quality in Canberra over the last decade. It has been made much worse by their high-density housing agenda. In 2009 the Canberra Times reported on economic analysis commissioned by the CFMEU which found that it would cost over $260 million to fix structural and safety defects in apartment buildings all over Canberra. The ABC reported late last year that an apartment building in Macquarie had such severe defects that it would be likely to completely and rapidly collapse in the event of a fire.
In the face of this widespread problem in Canberra, an Assembly committee inquiry conducted into building quality concluded in its report delivered last year that Canberra should have an independent building commissioner to ensure compliance with building standards and codes. The Labor-Greens government said no.
The parallels with Kippax are obvious. The community has a lack of confidence that any flood mitigation caveats put in place by the government will be adequate or enforced. In an ironic twist, the 2020 version of the flood report identifies the existing car parks to the east of Hardwick Crescent as ideal areas for development because they experience at worst only minor flooding.
While this saga drags on, the people of west Belconnen are being left behind. Belconnen is a wonderful place to live. I am proud to call it home. The people of Belconnen are sick of being ignored by this Labor-Greens government. For once, the people of west Belconnen would like to be taken seriously.
Women—health services
MS DAVIDSON (Murrumbidgee) (5.19): I wish to speak today in celebration of the 30th birthday of Women’s Health Matters, formerly known as the Women’s Centre for Health Matters, who have never forgotten where they came from.
They first became a funded service in 1991, working within a feminist framework. Dorothy Broom, at the opening of what was then called the Canberra Women’s Health Centre, at 3 Dundas Court in Phillip, said at their opening:
… our health needs as women can never be restricted to “complaints and conditions unique to women” … it is revolutionary when we move to reintegrate the fragmented parts, and to devise ways of placing ourselves back in the healing relationship as responsible agents …
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