Page 3436 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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It is a huge problem, and I applaud Mr Coe for bringing this issue of parking to the attention of the Assembly and trying to get some remedy for all of our areas which have been crying out for this issue to be addressed for some time. In closing, I commend Mr Coe’s motion and trust the Assembly will support Mr Coe’s motion in this regard.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (6.18): I certainly thank Mr Coe for bringing this motion before the Assembly today. I think this is an important issue for the citizens of Canberra. For the average Canberran, Mr and Mrs Average, this is a real issue of significance to them, and I will tell an anecdote to explain why that is. When we had the 20th anniversary of this Assembly in May 2009, MLAs conducted tours around this place, and I had the opportunity to take a group around and show them the Assembly. I was very excited; I had only been a member for about five months. I showed them the chamber, and we talked about the democratic processes of this place and the great privilege it was to be an MLA.
But at one stage of the tour someone asked me, “What’s the highlight of being an MLA, Jeremy?” And, tongue in cheek, I said, “Having a car park in Civic.” There was a great nod of approval that you would probably not get anywhere else other than Canberra. Probably more of a highlight than making some great speech in the Assembly was having a car park. That was certainly a tongue-in-cheek comment, but I think that from one Canberran to another group of Canberrans, the concerns were universal. Whether you are an MLA or whether you are a doctor, dentist, lawyer, plumber, teacher, mum, whoever you are, parking is a real issue.
We have seen that in a number of areas, and one in particular has been Cooleman Court which has been a particular issue I have been driving here in the chamber. The problems there have been going on for a number of years. The government has largely been ignoring them, and we had to drag the government over the line kicking and screaming to get a master plan on that place. That was something I rate as one of my proudest achievements in this place because, if the master plan is done well, that will have a tangible benefit for the people that use that centre and who try and get a car park there. It is not that it is an optional thing; it is not that they can catch the bus or walk down or cycle down. If you are going to a shopping centre to do your weekly grocery shopping, you cannot ride a bike, you cannot walk; you have to take a form of transport that allows you to pick up your shopping and go home, and that is a motor vehicle.
As much as the Greens rail against cars and do not like parking, the reality is that whilst our society is structured as it is and remains as it is, it is an essential component of our way of life that we cherish. This dispute, this sort of ideological hatred that the Greens have of car parks, came up in the estimates review. I think Mr Smyth commented earlier on the dissenting comment in the report. We talked about the problems that we have at Manuka whenever there is a big event and where people are trying to find a car park there. It is just intolerable, so we thought a good idea would be to have a review of both the parking and the public transport options to come up with a solution to problems caused by a big event there, be it an Aussie Rules game or so on. The Greens refused to allow the word “parking” to appear. They are simply anti parking and, by extrapolation, they are anti car.
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