Page 2062 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 May 2013
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land banking. There are people who are land banking all over this town on valuable sites which are usually turned over to multi-unit development in places like Page, in places like Higgins, in places like Giralang, where the service station is on its last legs, and places like Latham, where the service station has been closed as an operating service station for about 10 years. There will be problems there soon because they have not yet started remediation on that site. Until recently it was an active, ongoing business.
These are ongoing problems for people in the suburbs. They have undeveloped or underdeveloped blocks and they do not have enough information. They come to us because the information is not easily accessible. First and foremost, I think that one of the things that we should be doing is being able to provide people with information, either on-site or to be able to direct them to a website which says, “This is what is going on in your suburb. Where are they on the time frame for getting this block remediated and eventually having something else on the spot?”
In the meantime there should be more work done by the compliance people who are responsible for ensuring that blocks are not dirty across the ACT, and ensuring that those blocks are cleaned up as best as is possible given whatever is going on in relation to remediation. The weeds should be gone, the hoardings should be up, the construction fences should be in good order, and the people of the ACT need to know what is going on. And they need to know that this government are being proactive about these things. They have had policies and they went, “You know, we had this policy but it didn’t really work,” but they have not addressed the issue.
Looking at Mrs Jones’s list, there are about a dozen sites across the ACT which are causing inconvenience and are an eyesore in the suburbs, and the people who pay their rates and who pay us to ensure that their suburb is kept clean deserve better service from this government than they have been getting.
I commend Mrs Jones for this motion, and for being proactive on behalf of her constituents not only in Molonglo but across the ACT on this important issue. I think that we will actually get an outcome as a result of this. This will be hard work that is down to Mrs Jones as the person who is prepared to ask the questions and get things done.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.43): I thank Mrs Jones for raising this motion today. I am aware it is something that gives concern to the community, and I know it is a source of frustration for people across Canberra. It is also an issue that the Greens have taken an active interest in over the past Assembly. My former colleague Ms Le Couteur also asked questions and sought briefings on this issue. I think it can be said that disused service stations are an unsightly and unwanted addition to our local suburbs.
Ms Le Couteur asked many of the same questions as Mrs Jones in August 2010, and Minister Corbell’s response at the time was that there were 15 disused service stations around Canberra. So it looks like two of them have since been redeveloped, which is a good sign.
Members interjecting—
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