Page 3896 - Week 12 - Thursday, 23 November 2006
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Dr Foskey: Come and talk to me.
MRS DUNNE: I think I get the general gist. Dr Foskey is concerned about global warming and would like to see more activity centred at a local centre which provides walkability and rideability rather than driveability, which is a laudable thing, I suppose, for us to aim for. I am not quite sure whether as a community we are ready to take many of those steps, and the planning of Canberra, particularly in the sixties, seventies and eighties that brought about the Y plan, makes it fairly difficult for us to have a city that is walkable. We may have suburbs that are walkable and parts of areas that are walkable but, for those of us who have to go outside our immediate neighbourhood for employment or education, walkability and easy access in an environmentally sustainable way are a bit of a problem.
We talk about a renewed endeavour to provide services within a local context. This is certainly the case for many cities in Europe. Those that are more densely populated, especially small cities in countries like Switzerland and Austria, spend a lot of time creating cities and neighbourhoods that are more easily accessible on foot or by bike—and significant contributors to that accessibility are, of course, neighbourhood centres and local schools.
With the development of the Y plan and the increasing dependence of Canberrans on their cars, we have broken down some of that local coherence. Over the last two years, however, we have seen a bit of a resurgence. When I first came to work in this place in about 1996, one of the big things was the demise of the local shops. Many of those shopping centres that were on the way out in 1996 are seeing a resurgence now—Griffith is a classic example; we have talked about Griffith a lot today—and even ones that were almost on their last legs, like Melba, which was a burnt-out hulk with one shop remaining, is now a vibrant shopping centre; the owner has in fact extended the shopping centre and built more shops.
Another contributor to a vibrant locality like Melba or other suburbs is the school. There has been an increasing emphasis amongst school organisations to create the school as a centre of the community. One of the great initiatives to do that and to reinforce an environmentally sensitive approach to getting to and from school is the walking school bus, which has taken off in my electorate quite substantially. My children, when they are organised enough, participate in the walking school bus; otherwise they walk to school anyway, as it is not too far. The walking school bus means that children have to be ready to go to school at a particular time—and it does require some organisation. My daughter’s primary school has two or three routes going for the walking school bus.
The big standout in my electorate for participation in the walking school bus is Giralang, which Dr Foskey spoke about. Giralang school has been a huge supporter of the walking school bus and it is a great tragedy that if the government closes Giralang school at the end of this year most of the children who now walk to school will have to be driven to school because the distances they will then have to travel are well in excess of two kilometres, which is a pretty hard ask even for 11 and 12-year-olds, and an impossible ask for five and six-year-olds.
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