Page 2642 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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the terms of reference of the investigation have not been made public. The investigation details have been unclear since the beginning, not only to the Canberra community but, as it would seem, so too the government and directorate conducting the investigation.
The Canberra Liberals, like the wider community, have been asking for this issue to be properly addressed by this government since April this year. Questions need to be answered and the appropriate people need to be held to account. This investigation is obviously just another smokescreen hiding behind HR.
According to the government, this budget is a budget that delivers for Canberra. What it will actually deliver is still yet to be determined. Canberrans are supposed to trust that the government will practise what they preach and deliver what they promise but judging from its previous track record, like many others in Canberra, forgive me if I do not hold my breath.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.07): I would like to pick up the threads of Ms Lawder’s presentation, and I want to laud Ms Lawder for her persistence in using fix my street and its offshoots as a means of getting anything done through the ACT government. I am constantly reminded when I get letters, especially from Mr Rattenbury, that I really do not need to write constituent letters on behalf of my constituents because all they need to do is contact fix my street. Mr Rattenbury stands in this place on a regular occurrence to tell us why we do not need to write constituent letters because all we need to do, all the constituent needs to do, is write to fix my street. I have now resolved that on every occasion when I take up a constituent matter where a constituent has said to me, “I have contacted fix my street and nothing has happened,” I will put that in the letter so it will save Mr Rattenbury from telling me the bleeding obvious when it does not work.
My office has not been as persistent as Ms Lawder’s, but from time to time we put the system to the test. From time to time I will lodge, either through my home address or my home email or through my parliament address or parliament email, an issue which I come across. I might be going for a walk and find a pothole or a break in the path or something like that. Sometimes my senior adviser does the same things. He has found some around his home suburb, so he will write to fix my street and see what happens or he will write from his parliament@act.gov.au email address and see if he can get anything to happen. Generally speaking, it does not matter whether you write from a private email or a parliament email; you do not get a response. I have not once received a response that said, “We have looked at the issue that you have raised and we have fixed it,” or, “It is going to be fixed,’ or whatever. We do not get a response.
I have one constituent who has found that they got a prompt response from fix my street. It was on an occasion when the son of this household was involved in a very serious bicycle accident due to debris on a bicycle path. They rang and complained to fix my street and apparently somebody went out and swept the area the next day. That is laudable. But the thing is that the issue has not been followed up and this family has now said to me that they have complained again because there is debris in the same area where their son was very badly injured. He spent six days in hospital. He came headfirst off his bike as a result of debris getting stuck in the spokes of his. He was
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