Page 4146 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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takeaway, and maybe a few other services such as a post office, a chemist, a baker or a hairdresser. However, the residents of Giralang have instead had to live with a fenced-off eyesore in the middle of their suburb and have had to go elsewhere for their supermarket supplies. I can fully understand their increasing frustration at the continued lack of a functional local shopping centre.
Mr Assistant Speaker, I would like to share with you some of the feedback that Ms Le Couteur and I have recently received in the last fortnight or so from local residents. The first of the feedback was a comment that “had the ACT government enforced the original lease purpose clause the Giralang local supermarket would have been redeveloped years ago”.
There were comments from people about having lived in the neighbourhood for many years and their frustration at seeing the shops being run down, businesses more or less being forced out and then the ultimate closure of those shops. As I said, they are sitting derelict. And it is a terrible eyesore to have in anybody’s neighbourhood. Another piece of feedback reads:
I am concerned for the viability of the Evatt shopping centre in particular. It is currently healthy but each of the shops there benefits from the custom of the others. A centre needs people coming to it, and when people go there they see opportunity in other shops for purchases. A smaller centre in Giralang would be greatly preferred.
There are a number of pieces of feedback from people about their concern about the dominance of Woolworths and how they take up so much of the supermarket share. Ms Le Couteur went into the very worrying statistics that across Australia 80 per cent of the supermarket share goes to Woolworths and Coles. This really is putting the squeeze on other supermarket chains—our local one, Supabarn, but also on our smaller, mum and dad operated businesses, the IGAs.
Another piece of feedback was:
I am concerned that the size of the development threatens other local Belconnen centres. These smaller centres are important not just for the businesses in those areas, but for keeping suburbs alive, safe and “centred”. The current balance should not be disrupted in this way without a proper investigation of likely impacts on local business centres, community cohesion and traffic flows.
That was another issue that was raised—the fact that this site is right next to the primary school and the impact of a much larger supermarket on children’s safety in going to school. My understanding was that traffic flows and studies that were done were based on a smaller development. So we do not even have up-to-date traffic flows and studies that are based on the size of this development and the impact that this development is going to have on people who live in the area, on the safety of older people and children.
One person did point out that if you go there on a Saturday when soccer is on—and I have certainly been there many times on a Saturday when soccer is on—it is absolutely packed out along those streets. So people do have an understanding of what
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