Page 3699 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 28 October 2014
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significant opportunities that have only been half done or perhaps totally ignored.
The ACT government has a serious issue with expectations management. Frequently the government overpromises and under-delivers. Whether it is the grand plans for light rail, the city to the lake, the new stadium, the bus stop design for Adelaide Avenue or simply the performance of fix my street, this government is not in touch with reality. For instance, just this week I was contacted by a person who has lodged the same request on fix my street four times over a two-year period to get streetlights working. So it is no wonder that we are sceptical when the minister stands in the Assembly, as he did last week, and tells members of the opposition not to write to him and to simply submit requests online. Whilst Minister Rattenbury might not like our efforts on behalf of constituents, it is his job, and that is what he signed up to when he became minister, let alone Minister for Territory and Municipal Services.
The opposition has received many complaints from constituents about the mowing schedule and the new arrangements Minister Rattenbury has put in place. In an answer to a question on notice in June, Mr Rattenbury advised that under the new arrangements the mowing currently undertaken by contractors includes arterial road mowing, select suburb mowing in Gungahlin and Belconnen when required and rural roadside mowing and bushfire hazard reduction mowing of the urban edge. This means that the rest of the mowing in Canberra has been brought in-house. I would be keen to hear from the minister the rationale for this decision and what financial and performance improvement this is likely to generate.
Given the fact that the mowing requirements fluctuate with the seasons, I would have thought that it would have been conducive to contractors undertaking the work, but obviously not. Regardless, I hope Mr Rattenbury can explain the reasons for his decisions.
I am definitely not going to say that it is always the government’s responsibility to fix every problem. However, when people in Canberra pay the rates, fees, charges and taxes they do, it is reasonable to expect a high level of service delivery. If people are paying for something, they expect value for money. At present, I do not believe Canberrans are getting their money’s worth. If the ACT government wants to have a discussion about what is the role of government, community groups and households, then I think we would be happy to have that. But if the ACT government seeks to shift responsibility, they should also reduce the money that they are charging.
One such example is that, a couple of weeks ago, the Crace Community Association undertook a clean-up of rubbish on the public land surrounding the suburb. They asked TAMS for a waiver of the tip costs for the rubbish they collected and TAMS refused. Unfortunately, it took a letter from me to the minister to have this decision overturned, and the association was grateful that the minister’s intervention and my letter did, in fact, spark a change of heart from the department. But it was unfortunate that obviously there was not a culture or a policy framework in the department that allowed the department to make that decision in the first place. It perhaps shows there is a need for reform in that department to recognise that community associations do a lot of good work, and we should be doing all we can to encourage that kind of cooperation rather than trying to make it harder.
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