Page 398 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 21 March 2023
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millions and billions of dollars backing their day-to-day business. You would think that with this great power comes a sense of great responsibility. But we know that sometimes operators ignore the responsibilities they hold to their residents. On the extreme end of the scale, residents have reported to me serious incidents of elder abuse, both financial and emotional, which have left deep scars on vulnerable members of the senior community. I am also aware of physical threats to residents who speak up.
Other residents have reported to me that the essential amenities they were promised as part of their contracts were never provided or were never maintained. Things like regular social activities, easy access to services or a secure place to call home. These are the very features of retirement villages which attract people to part ways with hundreds of thousands of hard-earned dollars in the first place. Ideally there would be enforceable, accessible recourse available to the vulnerable residents of retirement villages to get these matters sorted out. However, here in the ACT there just is not. Current measures such as the village disputes committee, mediation and ultimately going all the way to the ACT Supreme Court can be confusing, arduous and very expensive. I think our seniors deserve better after a lifetime of hard work. That is why I am so proud to present and support John and Kay’s petition in this place today.
Transport—ANU bus services—petitions 2-23
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (10.21): This morning I wish to speak to the ANU bus route. This morning I also feel an acute sense of deja vu. Ms Clay, I can guarantee you that there was no low usage of the bus at the time when the ACT government cut it in 2019. I know this because on this very day four years ago, I tabled a petition signed by a similar number of Canberra residents calling on the Labor-Greens government to reverse its decision to cut the number three bus route which had serviced residents halls on the ANU Campus for 39 years.
As I said then, the university in many ways grew up around this bus route and the assumption that it would continue with student accommodation intentionally constructed along the route so that students would have access to a safe and reliable transport option. Four years ago the residents halls along Daley Road housed 3,274 people. I realise that number has now grown to more than 3,700 students. When I tabled the petition four years ago I pointed out that the student population along Daley Road’s 1.5 kilometre length was larger than the populations in most of suburbs in my electorate of Ginninderra. This remains the case. More students live on the ANU campus than there are people in Aranda, Charnwood, Flynn, Fraser, Hawker, Higgins, Lawson, Macquarie, McKellar, Melba, Page, Scullin, Spence, Strathnairn or Weetangera.
The problem of course is that this Labor-Greens government does not care about these students. It does not care that it will take the able-bodied amongst them an hour to walk to Civic and back each time they need to buy something. It does not care that those with disability, those who need to travel to medical appointments and international students face even greater obstacles. It does not care about the safety issues that arise from walking across a dimly lit campus at night.
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