Page 3839 - Week 12 - Thursday, 23 November 2006
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Dickson town centres. I am not by any means saying that those libraries should be closed; I am just saying that there has not been a rule applied.
There is a library in Griffith because Griffith was one of the first suburbs built. That library served the first populations of Canberra. As the residents have convincingly argued, isn’t Manuka a kind of town centre? That is an area that serves two very important vibrant centres—Kingston and Manuka—and, to a certain extent, Griffith and Narrabundah, as well as all the suburbs in the inner south. The neighbourhood plan that so many Griffith residents participated in some time ago was finalised in about 2004, I think. It never put up the idea that there would be no library in Griffith. There was a suggestion for moving the library, but there was no suggestion of getting rid of it. Now we are talking about losing the library and not re-establishing another. I think that is breaking faith with the people who participated in the many consultations about the Griffith town centre.
In the library report we see the machine model version of the library. We have references to space ratios. Did you know there is too much space at Griffith? There is also too much at Dickson—we had better do something about that. It is the idea that every library user just needs enough space to stand up in. I am not sure exactly how you calculate what is the appropriate amount of space for people, but you certainly do not use that as a bottom line. In Griffith, which is a largish library, given that it is in an old primary school, they have made very good use of the space.
I have to say that Griffith is a young people’s library. It has a children’s area, a sort of teenagers’ area and a young people’s area. Those spaces are designed and decorated in such a way that each of those age groups would feel welcome. Indeed, they were being utilised on the mornings that I was there. One of the best speakers at last week’s public rally was a young person, a Narrabundah College student, who said that her whole life has involved using the Griffith library. Even though college libraries, high school libraries and primary school libraries are very good, they do not have all the books. We all know that when there is an assignment students rush out to find books in the nearest library. It would be a pity if students from Narrabundah, which produces some of our best results in the ACT, were disadvantaged by not having access to the Griffith library.
The Griffith library is also important to families, young people and isolated individuals, whether they are young or old. It is also an elderly people’s library. That is because Griffith is one of the areas with an ageing demographic—again due to its history. The library is used by many elderly people who walk there or drive their car there and park close by. That is hugely important to them and it is just the sort of thing that governments are inclined to overlook.
What about the argument that people can get on a bus? A lot of people get on a bus and go to Woden now and bring back bags of shopping. Now they will have to haul back a bag of library books as well. It is not a good argument. It also makes a joke out of the saving identified in the report, which Mr Hargreaves has said that he has not imposed, of $1 a half-hour for internet access. It costs more than a dollar to catch a bus to go to Woden or Civic, so this is a pretty false saving. In fact, it is not a saving at all—not for the group of people we are talking about.
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