Page 5522 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009
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into the centre—all manner of things. The exit from Comrie Street into Sternberg and going into McWhae, for example, is good if you happen to be a rally car driver—Mr Gentleman had a great time going in and out of there in his blue beast. But we do need to organise forward.
We have all been trying to do our best along the way. I know Mr Smyth did. I did and both governments have, and I am pleased to see that Mr Barr is picking up the process. And I do thank very much Ms Bresnan for bringing this motion forward. For Ms Le Couteur: Tuggeranong is not a long way from the city. Mr Smyth got it right: it is the other way around. We cannot move it closer to the city, although we would if we could. But you have also got to understand that it is not a long way from the city. I lived in Holt; that was a long way from the city. I have relatives that live in Gungahlin, which is a generation away from the city. The fact is that the roads are so fantastic that nowhere is more than 20 minutes from the city; in fact, it is about equal distance.
Mr Doszpot: The roads are so fantastic?
MR HARGREAVES: You would not know any more because you do not live here. You used to live in Kambah—the place improved when you left. When you look at the distance from the city through to Belconnen, it takes you the same amount of time to get to Holt and it takes you the same amount of time to get to Gungahlin. And at the wrong time of the day it takes you the same amount of time to get from Civic to Downer, if you are on your bike.
What I am hoping to get out of this particular planning process is a departure from the notion that Tuggeranong is a set of dormitory suburbs. That is the one thing that I have been fighting against since the day I got elected in 1998—the notion that Tuggeranong is a set of dormitory suburbs—because it is not. We need to look at having a second economic food chain in the Tuggeranong Valley to keep the kids there. It was my dream that people could be born in a hospital, on their first day go back into Tuggeranong and never have to leave it: they could get their jobs there, they could get their education there, they could die there.
As for Mr Barr, he is an itinerant gypsy anyway; he moves in and around the cave dwellers of the city north. He would not know what it was like to have a nice bunch of kids in the backyard and that lovely sound of the tinkling toenails up the wall—all those sorts of things.
We have got to get away from Tuggeranong being a dormitory set of suburbs. It is not the case that Tuggeranong will provide the workforce for the cave dwellers of the inner north. They are entitled to have their economic opportunities; they are entitled to have the same things as everybody else. But do not mistake it: the Tuggeranong Valley—the town centre, Erindale, Chisholm, Calwell, Gordon, Conder and all the others—has very vibrant places. The Tuggeranong Valley did have a night life—but it got better when the Anketell Street development occurred. It was always fantastic, but it got better.
I will not allow anybody to stand up and say that the Tuggeranong Valley is not a really nice place to live, for whatever reason. It could just be better, and I am hoping that will be the case. Again, for the record, to Ms Bresnan, thank you very much.
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