Page 1517 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Of course, there are other schedules, as Mr Rattenbury mentioned, also available online. There are grass mowing schedules available online. There is the daily road resurfacing schedule made available to members of the community to review. And there is an annual street sweeping program in place. Again, that is available online.
I think in relation particularly to the street sweeping, it is worth highlighting that street sweeping occurs usually on an annual basis, certainly in the suburban context. And it may be the case that people who have not seen a street sweeper simply were not home or not aware that on the particular day the street sweeping program occurred, because it only occurs, on average, once a year. And that is, of course, a reasonable service standard. But if people do not notice it, of course they are going to say they have not seen a street sweeper. But it does not mean that it does not occur and the program is online so that members of this place and, indeed, the broader community can review it.
So the government does take these issues seriously. It is a challenging task, as Mr Rattenbury alludes. It is a challenging task to maintain the large amount of built infrastructure in our city. Because we have an extensive pedestrian path network, footpath network, cycle and shared path network and because we are a garden city, we face, on average, many more tasks of maintenance than perhaps an equivalent urban area does.
These are the issues that we continue to work to address. But the programs and the policies are well and truly in place to address them and to respond to complaints in a reasoned and consistent manner when they are raised by members of the community. So I commend the amendment to the Assembly and indicate that I and other Labor members will support it.
MR DOSZPOT (Molonglo) (5.44): I must say that I am disappointed in Mr Rattenbury’s amendment because, as we have just been discussing as well, the fact is the motion that I have put before the Assembly here is basically covered in a lot of the ambitious statements that Mr Rattenbury makes, or commitments that he is giving. Yet he is not willing to accept the motion which calls on the government to:
publish current maintenance schedules up until the end of this calendar year by the next sitting period in June 2014;
If he saying that they are already doing it, what is so difficult about that? The motion calls on the government to publish updates to maintenance schedules quarterly. If he has got all that information, that should not be too difficult. It also calls on the government to have urgent prioritisations for older suburbs for improvements. These are not difficult issues to look at. From what Mr Rattenbury is saying, his department is looking into aspects of that.
What we are trying to do is give the people, the older citizens especially, some comfort in the fact that we understand that the everyday issues they confront are very serious. We have got streets in the older suburbs, Deakin and Yarralumla, where if you walk out at night and if have not got a very strong torch, even a totally able individual will find it difficult negotiating some of those dark street corners and
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video