Page 779 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 April 2014
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government is good on the glossy. What it is not good on is the delivery. I guess that is the context in which Mr Corbell is written out of the history of ACT government planning for the city, because he has not delivered. He has never delivered and I suspect he will never deliver.
Again, the comment was made that the government have got the city plan, but will they ever deliver it? I said, “It is not actually a plan for the city. It is a spatial framework.” Most there were stunned. They actually thought that it was the plan for the city. I said, “No.” Questions were asked. Ms Gallagher said that the city plan at its heart is a spatial framework document that sets the scene for what we would like to happen in terms of transport and planning. It sets the scene. It is a scene setter. It is not a delivery document.
So when Mr Corbell said that this is the first overarching document, he obviously was not referring to his document. But he did forget three previous documents that have been done by the previous Liberal government that I was a part of. We did “Our city, a vital, accessible and sustainable Civic”. It was an inquiry. From that we developed Creating our city, an implementation strategy, and from that we developed Building our city, which was tabled in September 2001.
It was a strategy to improve the public realm for Civic, Canberra’s central business district. So there was an overarching strategy. There was lots of work done, and then it was abandoned by this government, because they were not interested in Civic. They have not been interested in Civic except as a place to sell land in an attempt to balance their budgets.
We need to have a true CBD as real cities do that becomes a central hub and, more importantly, becomes an economic hub. A lot of the work in cities, a lot of the economy of cities, a lot of the wealth creation of cities occur in their CBDs. Certainly when you look across the skyline of Civic today, it is not happening in this city under this government, under the coalition of the Greens and the Labor Party.
The government have delivered a lovely glossy document. The real question is: do they have the wherewithal to deliver it? Indeed, what will it mean for the city when they go ahead? You only have to look at the section on the priorities where they talk about what may or may not happen. I think people know that I have a small interest in the convention centre and its future. It is not even a priority project. The number one issue for the business community in terms of infrastructure is the convention centre. You only have to look at the document put together by the Canberra Business Council where 54 different business groups and organisations have signed up and said, “We want the convention centre first.” Is it a priority for this government? No, it is not.
We have got the Parkes Way investigation and we have got the lake’s edge works investigation—investigation, not a plan. Nothing else is a priority in the project delivery sense for this government. I think that is a shame. That is a shame. The opportunities that come, for instance, from business infrastructure that brings business, that generates revenue, allow you to actually pay for the things that government delivers that the private sector cannot.
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