Page 1459 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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(b) more efficiently manage funds within the Department of Territory and Municipal Services to allow the department to undertake adequate maintenance of public areas, including local shops, around Canberra each year.
I am pleased to be bringing this motion forward this evening. The provision of municipal services is one of the most important roles of the ACT government and, indeed, of any local government. Along with issues such as health, education and law and order, the provision of basic municipal services is what people expect of their government; it is what they pay their rates for; and it is what people deserve in our city.
This motion notes the very important role of the ACT government in maintaining the look of Canberra; the role it plays with local communities to maintain streetscapes, local shops and provide basic services; the importance of local shopping precincts; talks about the government’s bungled program to refurbish local shops; the significant impact that delays and poor timing have on small businesses; calls on the government to look at the timing of its refurbishment of local shops and address basic maintenance issues with local services, with community facilities and local shops; and, indeed, more broadly calls on the government to more efficiently manage funds within the Department of Territory and Municipal Services to allow the department to undertake adequate maintenance of public areas, including the local shops around Canberra, each year.
Madam Assistant Speaker, I am sure you, like many of us, often receive correspondence in relation to the look of the city, in relation to the look of our local centres, in relation to the provision of basic services at those local centres. We in the Canberra Liberals spend a lot of time at these shopping centres. I know that all of my colleagues have been spending time in local centres in their electorates. I have been spending time in local and group centres, not just in my electorate but right across the ACT, along with my colleagues, finding out what are some of the issues, finding out where we can assist, making representations on behalf of not just shop owners but local residents who use these local shopping precincts.
I think it is one of the most important jobs we have as local members. I want to read firstly from some of the constituent correspondence I have had and then talk about some of what we have seen at the local shops and at our local centres. This is one of the letters I have received recently:
Most days, as a retiree, I am able to take a walk, normally around the Hughes area. And what I am seeing in the way of discarded rubbish disgusts me. Bottles, cans, plastic, paper etc are everywhere. You would swear that some people had no civic pride and saw it as the norm to dispose any item they had finished with, wherever they happened to be … In yesteryear we thought of Queanbeyan as being “Struggle Town”. Not any more …
I think Canberra is a fantastic place but you see that frustration from residents when they do not see the basics being taken care of. This is one of the fundamentals of a local government.
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