Page 1415 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 April 2013
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The government, whilst working on major projects like the city plan and capital metro, will also continue to work hard to ensure the overall amenity of our city and suburbs. As part of this, the ACT government manages and maintains approximately 90Â shopping centres and in 1995 embarked on a rolling program of capital upgrades to improve shopping centres. Over 13 years of operation, funding has steadily increased in line with changing needs.
From 2001 to 2010, $11.5 million was provided towards the upgrade of 12 shopping centres—that is, over a nine-year period. In 2009-10, the government spent approximately a further $8 million to upgrade the public-owned spaces around 13 local shopping centres to improve safety and accessibility and to provide new lighting, street furniture and landscaping over the four to five-year period in which it will be expended. As you can see, this is a significant increase in funding.
As we spend this money, priorities for shopping centre upgrades are planned and considered. A comprehensive audit program was developed and completed most recently in 2012 to determine what works were required at local shopping centres. This audit considered furniture including seats, tables, bins, toilets, the state of shrub beds and drinking fountains. I know that members think this may be small bickies, but it is important for people in the suburbs, when they visit their local shopping centre, that these upgrades are undertaken. Shopping centres to be upgraded in my electorate over the next four years that are examples of this work are Evatt, Florey, Kaleen, Fraser, Spence and Macquarie. This work will continue and we will progressively ensure that we maintain our local centres; they are an integral part of the Canberra lifestyle.
This brings me to our overall investment in infrastructure. This government has invested heavily in infrastructure. We consider it an important part of ensuring that our infrastructure meets the needs of a growing Canberra community. Every year we are investing record levels of funding in building a stronger local health system, investing in better schools and teachers, maintaining a strong local economy and creating more jobs than ever before.
ACT Labor has been building up our health services right across the ACT, with new services, new buildings, including community health centres, more doctors and nurses. Right now ACT Labor invests more than $1 billion each year to make our health system even stronger and deliver health care where and when it is needed. ACT Labor is committed to building the health system we need for the future.
The health infrastructure program is a 10-year, $1 billion-plus infrastructure program designed to completely overhaul our health system and deliver new and exciting health facilities, new services and new ways of providing care for patients. It involves designing and constructing contemporary, state-of-the-art health facilities that will serve the Canberra community well into the future.
The work to inform this program began in 2007 when the ACT Labor government undertook an exhaustive investigation into the expected future health services needed for the ACT. This investigation identified a combination of a growing, ageing and
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