Page 1523 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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opposition firmly believes that we need to refocus our commitment to the territory so that core municipal services are appropriately brought to the attention of the ACT government.
It is interesting that Ms Berry would bring forward this motion today, given the government’s track record. Of course, she flags the situation in Crace. When Crace was rezoned, in effect, to do away with the playing fields, the government tried to spin it as this being a real victory for the people of Crace, despite the fact that they actually lost urban open space. It was a real victory because they would do a tiny bit of landscaping. Well, they were going to do landscaping before. So the addition of landscaping came at the expense of landscaping. Therefore I think it is pretty hard for the ACT government to say that this was a real boon for the people of Crace.
Of course, one of the debacles when it comes to urban areas of interest would be that of Green Square in Kingston. Those of us who were in the last Assembly would remember Mr Stanhope kicking up a song and dance about how inappropriate it was to have grass there, and about how inappropriate it was to have irrigation at Green Square in Kingston.
However, several years on, as with so many things that happened after Mr Stanhope left this place, the government decision changed and, once again, Green Square is in fact green. It was the ACT government who pretty much said, “This is always the way we’ve thought about Green Square. It should always have been grass.” Well, it was a different story just a few short years ago.
Another issue of concern to the opposition is the delay within TAMS to reproduce the map for where dogs can be off-leash. This is something which I understand has been in development for many months—well over a year now—yet the map for where dogs are allowed to be off-leash is still not published. I do not think we have even seen a draft form of it, in fact. It would be very handy if Mr Rattenbury in his address today could give some clarity as to where things are at. As it stands at the moment there is actually an area of Lake Ginninderra where you are not allowed to take dogs. It is absolutely impossible to walk around Lake Ginninderra and to comply with the current map with regard to where dogs are allowed to be taken. That is certainly something that the opposition believes should be clarified as soon as possible.
Another interesting issue which has recently been brought to my attention is Mr Gentleman’s lobbying efforts. You would think that Mr Gentleman would have the ear of the government, the ear of the Chief Minister and perhaps the ear of the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services. But it seems that Mr Gentleman cannot quite cut through with regard to his pet issues. He cannot quite cut through on behalf of his community in Brindabella and he needs to set up a petition to lobby the government to restore Theodore oval.
I am not sure how many people have signed his out-of-order petition at ipetitions.com, but it is quite interesting that the citation is that Mr Gentleman cares for the people of Theodore and Mr Gentleman is going to lobby the ACT government. He fails to mention that he is in the ACT government and he fails to mention that it is his party room which should be deciding who the minister is and what the priorities are. Instead
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