Page 173 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 6 March 2007
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collected and will be inefficiently distributed, to the detriment of the people of the ACT, most particularly to the detriment of people in Civic who should be expecting and receiving a higher level of service from their municipal suppliers than they are currently getting. That is why the opposition opposes this bill.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (11.38): Sometimes I sit here in wonderment. Those arch defenders of the private sector are actually taking what is a good idea, promoted by the private sector in the interests of the private sector, to be paid for and administered by the private sector, and saying that they think that it is a really dumb idea. I think we had better send them an application form to join the Democrats because they are clearly not advocating on behalf of their soul mates.
Mr Mulcahy: You sound like you have joined the Nationals.
MR HARGREAVES: I do not think the Nationals would have you. I think you are a bit too far right wing for them, quite frankly. I think your hang ’em high policies and approach to life are far too right wing for the National Party of Australia. I do not think they would have you.
Mrs Dunne talks about our responsibilities with regard to graffiti. She knows only too well that we have to receive permission from private property owners to remove graffiti. As I have said in this place before in terms of private property in the suburbs, we have been directed by a private property owner in either Rivett or Waramanga, one of those two suburbs, not to remove graffiti from the outside of a fence which faces onto a public park. We know that government policy is to remove graffiti if it is violent in nature, sexual in nature or extremely offensive in nature, and we do. It might take up to a week these days to do it. But the fact is that it is on private property.
Mr Mulcahy is saying that the Melbourne Building is looking pretty shoddy and somebody ought to do something about it. He said that perhaps the owners might think about it. I agree with him. I know that there is to be a blue moon tonight, but I do agree with him that these folk ought to accept their responsibility, their corporate citizenship, concerning that historic building. The colonnades are preserved for all time, we hope. But, quite frankly, they bring the city down. They are grubby. They are really horrible to look at as you drive down the so-called main street of Canberra. But the government of the day has no power to insist on that, as Mr Corbell has said. There is no one single owner, necessarily.
In fact, I had a conversation about that when I had lunch recently—not with your old mate from the west, Mr Mulcahy, and not with your namesake, Mrs Burke—with the property council. Guess what they said. They said, “Minister, this city heart levy is a great idea. Maybe we can put some pressure, using that levy and money, on getting those buildings whipped into shape.” One of the people advocating that position was an owner of a store in the Sydney Building. This group of people firmly support it.
What have we got? The people opposite are saying that the visions of Emmanuel Notaras are wrong. They are saying that about Emmanuel Notaras’s commitment to the heart of Canberra, the city heart, to the very spirit of Canberra that
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