Page 2987 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 October 2022
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opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and put in useful information for older Canberrans—and other Canberrans as well, if they happen to read the paper copy of Our CBR.
I would really like to see this added to the amendment. It would make it much more useful. With my amendment to Mr Steel’s amendment, I commend that amendment to the Assembly. I could add “amendment” a few more times to the sentence, but I will stop now!
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (5.07): I would like to speak to the amendment that we are debating at the moment. I have spoken to many constituents who have told me that the process of obtaining compensation from the government for pothole damage is difficult. Often they cannot even find where they should apply for compensation. Given that the government insisted that the Our CBR newsletter is essential for conveying important information to constituents, rather than its being a taxpayer-funded political flyer I strongly suggest that they put crystal clear and easy instructions on how to apply for pothole damage compensation in their next newsletter. Perhaps they could include the link to the online form that their website says will be available in the coming weeks.
In Minister Steel’s speech he said that it is quite clear how to seek compensation on the government’s website, but he is completely out of touch because that is not how a lot of constituents access information on how they should receive compensation for their damaged vehicles due to potholes. I will talk about one specific case. A constituent of mine tried to navigate through the government system to seek compensation on their vehicle, which had been damaged by potholes. He outlined in excruciating detail his experience of applying for pothole compensation. I say “excruciating” because it is dull to listen to and annoying, but I feel it is important to relate it so that everyone in the chamber can hear how frustrating it can be to claw compensation from the government. The constituent first went to the ACT government website and sifted through the tabs. No luck there. Then they googled “ACT government pothole compensation form” and found instructions on how to apply for compensation on the first hit. Not bad. They followed the instructions which told them to go to Fix My Street and click on “Roads, parking and vehicles”. They did so, but could not go any further. There was no submit button or any tab that directed the user to a compensation form.
They realised they probably needed to login. Fortunately, they had made an ACT government digital account previously. After entering their user name and password, they hit “enter” and could not get in. The site said that either their user name or password was entered incorrectly. They tried again—same result. The user then clicked the “Having trouble logging-in” button, which sent them an email allowing them to reset their password. They entered the same password they had tried to enter the first time. The site said, “You cannot use an old password.” So the password was right the first time, but the site did not seem to remember that.
Getting a little frustrated now, the user came up with a new password and reset it. Heading back to the site, they entered in the new password and were then sent an email with a verification pin. They entered that in and finally got access to the site. They then got a pop-up asking them to verify their mobile number by sending their
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