Page 2337 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2022
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gone, with few substantive contributions to my electorate. I am an MLA for a growing electorate, with a diverse range of people at different ages and stages, with different requirements, and I would like to highlight that the budget that was handed down yesterday does not, in my opinion, address the needs of this growing community. Do not even get me started on how basic services are delivered! My daily drive from home to work and back to home in the evening is a “dodge the potholes” approach.
I do note and welcome a contribution of $9.43 million for the new Gungahlin tennis centre. I am pleased for the residents of Gungahlin and the surrounding area about this investment. But I had the opportunity within the last couple of weeks to visit what is called the Hawker tennis centre. I would encourage every Ginninderra member to go and visit that location, because what looked to be a very well built and popular tennis centre is now a derelict site and almost a dumping ground. It is a disgrace to see in my electorate of Ginninderra a purpose-built centre that has been allowed to degrade and to waste away, particularly surrounded by such a professionally maintained sporting precinct like the softball centre and the soccer grounds. The Hawker tennis centre is in a derelict state, it is dangerous and it resembles a dump site. Shame on this government’s lack of consideration for the electorate of Ginninderra!
I mention as well the need that has been brought to this Assembly for an upgrade of the infrastructure of the Evatt shops. I have mentioned many times the dry ovals in Ginninderra, particularly Holt, Macgregor and Florey ovals. Again, they are signs of neglect of this electorate. I was at Charnwood shopping centre just a week and a half ago and noticed some spot repairs for paving. But how long has it taken for that derelict and dangerous area outside the shopping precinct to be at least looked at to some small degree? I note as well that another sapling had been removed; I am not quite sure by whom. But, again, it is a very popular shopping precinct in west Belconnen that is being neglected.
Frankly, it is shameful that this Labor-Greens government continues to neglect Ginninderra residents to a degree that I think they do not deserve. So it is my hope that the government listens to me—and perhaps to other Ginninderra members’ voices, who should be saying similar things, I believe. The investment needed for this electorate is not up to scratch and it should be doing better.
Hospitals—staffing
MS CASTLEY (Yerrabi) (6.40): I rise today to acknowledge the nurses, midwives and AINs who came out in the rain and rallied outside the Assembly today. This group of people are hardworking and they deserve a safe work environment—just like the rest of us do, but we do not have to rally for that. Unfortunately, things are so bad that they are taking drastic action to get answers from the government, and what they are asking for is not unreasonable. It is a safe work environment, a healthy work culture, ratios that the government have promised and appropriate workforce planning.
I hear that they are feeling invisible. They want more than empty words. It is also a disappointment to me that a member of the government has so little faith in his government that he has raised his own petition to get action and answers for our nurses, midwives and AINs.
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