Page 2679 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 26 September 2007
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to cross Commonwealth Avenue—this is a matter for the NCA, I think—between the Hyatt Hotel and the corner there and London Circuit in Civic.
Mr Hargreaves: It has been knocked back.
DR FOSKEY: It is a really big issue and somebody doing that has already died. I think we need to put a little bit more pressure—
Mr Hargreaves: It has got the underpass.
DR FOSKEY: An underpass is good but we are talking about a couple of kilometres, and that is a long way for a lot of people to walk. You cannot always see cars coming around the bends. You can start to cross that road and find yourself in the middle with cars coming.
A constituent contacted my office recently regarding the lack of footpaths in Red Hill, which he believed was affecting his elderly parents’ ability to walk in the area around their home. I thought Red Hill was one of the suburbs that was well-supplied with footpaths, but apparently not. Even though drivers might be driving—
Mr Hargreaves: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I do not wish to interrupt too much but Dr Foskey has a question about that very issue on the notice paper. I think it is No 1698 and it is about the Red Hill footpath issue. I ask you to let Dr Foskey know what the rules are; she can make the point but she should be careful not to break the standing orders.
MR SPEAKER: That is not a point of order. It might be a point of debate.
Mr Hargreaves: You can’t debate something that is on the notice paper.
DR FOSKEY: I am not debating it; I am mentioning it in passing. There are plenty of other examples. Certainly, one of the issues that I noticed when I was living in the salubrious suburb of Yarralumla, which, as we know, has an ageing population, was the slow pace at which elderly people cross the street. They are extremely vulnerable to cars coming around and cutting the corner. I have seen it; I actually stopped the traffic to help one very elderly lady who I often used to encounter at the corner of Schlich and Novar streets, to make sure that she could cross the road safely. We have an ageing population; we need to make our city safer for pedestrians and we need to understand that some of them cannot speed up.
We have also had concerns raised about street lighting not functioning. Although this might seem innocuous, and something that can be fixed in time, it is an issue in relation to climate change. However, there are low wattage street lights which can be, and are being, taken up by many governments in their replacement program—
Mr Hargreaves: And us.
DR FOSKEY: Including the ACT, I am assured. We need to make sure that people can walk safely around the streets and that they are visible to cars. There is that point
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