Page 2674 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 August 2015
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(2) calls on the Government to:
(a) explain clearly to MOCCA clients and operators and the wider southside Canberra community whether MOCCA will be removed from its existing site and if so, to where;
(b) explain to the Telopea Park School community whether the bulldozing of tennis courts on Montgomery Oval will proceed in December, irrespective of whether a child care centre is located there or not; and
(c) commit to genuine and meaningful consultation with the wider Manuka community over future plans for development of the old Services Club site and plans for multi-storey apartment housing within the Manuka commercial precinct.
The motion I present to the Assembly today brings together a number of disenfranchised, disappointed and frustrated communities who cannot understand why a government is sacrificing a childcare centre and a school and compromising a returned services club membership, all in a vague apparent quest for better oval facilities.
Before I go further, I would like to welcome some of those communities here this morning—the parents from Telopea Park School and Mocca individuals and supporters of Mocca and the inner south councils who have been very supportive of Mocca and Telopea Park School issues.
The motion that I bring to the Assembly today probably had its genesis in the 2002 Manuka Oval master plan. The 2002 plan, prepared by dsb Landscape Architects, set out a vision for Manuka Oval. Thirteen years later, that plan is strangely, and embarrassingly for this government, clairvoyant. Much of what was outlined 13 years ago forms part of what the government is trying to foist on the Manuka precinct today.
For example, in respect of the Services Club site, the plan says, “In the longer term the site may be developed further, for example as high quality hotel accommodation.” Remember that this was 2002, when the site was occupied by a heritage protected building. The same plan also alluded to a multistorey car park on Montgomery Oval.
Is it any wonder that Chief Minister Barr was quick to suggest that the 2002 plan was now superseded? Superseded it might be, but outdated and out of touch it is not. Fast-forward to 2015. The Land Development Agency’s website says that the 2009 master plan is about guiding “future development of Manuka Oval over the next 25 years”. It says:
The Government undertook community consultation on the master plan in 2013.
The master plan 2015 version is now all about relocation of a childcare centre, a new Services Club and the seizing—and that is what it is—of land from a very popular and growing school.
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