Page 564 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
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In some cases much-needed street lighting does not even exist where it is urgently needed, such as the CIT car park at Reid. Last year the minister made the excuse that this car park was reserved for development. In the meantime, despite people’s concerns, no attention has been given to improving people’s safety with improved lighting. There has not even been a deployment of mobile lighting as a temporary measure. The situation has been deteriorating for months.
Mr Corbell: It has never had lighting on it. It did not have it under Brendan Smyth and it did not have it under anyone else. It is a dirt car park, for heaven’s sake.
MR PRATT: The population has increased and you just have not kept up with the community’s needs. You cannot keep up with the community’s needs.
One of the problems I have been informed about is the convoluted process that takes place to repair or replace streetlights. I recall that late last year, on three occasions, street lights in Rowntree Crescent in Isaacs were out for between four and seven days.
Mr Hargreaves: That is as bad as using your own family as another excuse.
MR PRATT: I am pretty mobile, thank you, minister. The current situation is that Urban Services, which own the lights, contracts ActewAGL to service lights and also contracts a third party to schedule the servicing of lights. This seems to create a cumbersome communications system that must slow down the servicing. Surely ActewAGL and Urban Services can work together without a scheduling layer in between. This is an issue the government should be seriously looking at addressing.
There is also the issue of our much utilised but inadequately managed recreational ovals. Unfortunately, during the recent drought years, this government did not employ proper water management techniques in order to ensure that our ovals stayed usable or repairable. They are not drought proof. Many of these ovals have gone to the dogs and the government has not made serious efforts to reinstate them for use. Many ovals remain unusable and the word is that it may cost anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 per hectare to reinstate them.
I do not know whether the government has talked in recent times about embarking on programs to try and resuscitate or reactivate some of those ovals. Chisholm oval is a classic example, not simply the oval itself but the surrounding green areas. It is heavily used by the Chisholm community. Residents have told me that the whole community uses those ovals for walking their dogs and for weekend soccer games, and now they are simply dust bowls with strategically placed weeds. They cannot use them at all. The government do not have the money in the budget for such repair measures. That is the problem. But they manage to find the funds for pie-in-the-sky projects. Our urban environment suffers while Mr Stanhope parades himself on the glory of Great Wall of China type projects such as the arboretum.
Let us have a look at off-road cycle lanes. Since the government’s focus on on-road cycle lanes began these have not been maintained properly. The thing is that many families need to use these recreational pathways for family outings. They are even used by commuting cyclists who do not like to go on-road. Not every cyclist wants to get in
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