Page 4989 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 26 October 2011
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electorates, that they have not achieved anything for the community, from being part of this coalition. All they have done has been to give a blank cheque to the Labor Party to keep doing what they are doing, and we see it again today.
Ms Bresnan suddenly is interested in Calwell shops and there being upgrades. Why didn’t the Greens negotiate that when they were negotiating on the budget, as they do every year? People in Calwell and south-east Tuggeranong would be asking themselves the question: why didn’t they go in to bat for us? Why are they only now, in an amendment, saying that these things are important? They were important a year ago, they were important two years ago and they were important three years ago.” This government have failed to deliver and their coalition partners, the Greens, have supported their failure to deliver by giving them support for each of their budgets and all of their policies and by not pushing for outcomes for the people of Tuggeranong and, in this case, specifically for the people of Calwell and south-east Tuggeranong.
The other aspect of the amendment which does not make a lot of sense is proposed paragraph (2)(a)(vii), “ensuring that adequate roads and footpaths are provided adjacent to the proposed aged care site before it is built”. The problem with that is that if you go ahead and sell it there will be development rights. If the argument is that you are going to sell the block and then take away some of those development rights later in order to provide adequate roads and footpaths, that is a problem. You would be far better off supporting Mr Smyth’s motion, which would simply put it on hold for a little while, while the important planning takes place, so that we can get it right.
What we do not want is an aged-care facility built without the best access to the centre. We do not want an aged-care facility that is in a less than optimal centre in Calwell because the planning has not been done and because in fact provision of that aged-care facility stops the proper planning being done. That is what this motion is about. It is about saying, firstly, we do need a master plan for Calwell. This has been called for by the residents and by business owners in Calwell for some time, for a number of years, and the government have been very slow to realise—as they were in Kambah, as they are in Cooleman Court, as they are right around the city—that centres like Calwell are critical hubs and we do need a master planning process for them. But you do not then go and sell one of the biggest pieces of land—I think the biggest piece of land left—without having done the proper planning.
This is a motion that should be supported as it is—it should not be amended—and I think the Greens now have to be called for their performance. They have to be called for what they are and what they have done. In fact this proposed amendment by Ms Bresnan is an acknowledgement of all the things that she has not achieved for the people of Tuggeranong, and the people of Calwell in this case, over the last three years.
The Greens have been in the box seat to deliver these kinds of things. They could have said, “Sure, we’ll vote for your budget if you provide proper facilities to our local communities that desperately need these upgrades.” But they did not; they chose not to. And now they are desperately scrambling in the last year before the election to say, “We need these things to happen and we need them to happen now.” People will see through that—and the Labor Party and the Greens will be judged on these last four years. They will be judged on the delivery in those four years.
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