Page 115 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014

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this year. The memorial is involved with the Department of Defence, Reconciliation Australia and other agencies and galleries in assisting with their commemorative events highlighting Indigenous service people. Some of this will touch on the motivations for volunteering and how it changed people’s lives.

Another part of the centenary will include the 140,000 schoolchildren who visit the memorial each year. During the centenary, they will be asked to write their name and school on a wooden cross. This, with their messages, will be placed on the graves of First World War Australian soldiers throughout Europe. I hope this project and the whole commemoration will lead to a better understanding of how and why we became entangled in that war and the personal and national costs.

Roads—Spofforth Street

MR COE (Ginninderra) (5.38): I rise today to convey to the Assembly the views of more than 600 people who have put their names to a petition calling on the government to take a common-sense approach to traffic in Holt. I believe that the ACT government has messed up traffic in Holt. The installation of speed humps on Spofforth Street has moved traffic into neighbouring streets which are now more dangerous than they were before. The installation of the speed humps, at a cost of more than $100,000, has created far more problems than it has solved. I, and more than 600 people, of whom the vast majority are from Holt, believe it is time to remove the speed humps and return traffic to normal before making any other changes. Of course, the streets have to be appropriately policed.

In August I moved a motion in the Legislative Assembly calling on the government to remove all the speed humps on Spofforth Street and abandon the plans for the street improvements. Unfortunately, Labor and the Greens did not support my motion, so it was not passed. However, I remain convinced that the speed humps should be removed.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table more than 450 names of people who put their names to the paper petition.

Leave granted.

MR COE: I present the following paper:

Petition which does not conform with the standing orders—Holt—Spofforth Street traffic.

All but a few of them are in addition to those who signed the e-petition on the same subject presented by the Clerk this morning. To have so many people from one suburb put their names to a petition should surely be a wake-up call for the government. I urge the ACT government to listen to the views of the residents of Holt before committing to even more changes which may worsen the traffic problems in the suburb.


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