Page 742 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 21 March 2017
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Pursuant to standing order 99A, the petition, having more than 500 signatories, was referred to the Standing Committee on Planning and Urban Renewal.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.02), by leave: I am very pleased to be able to represent over 1,600 people who have a problem with this development. I say over 1,600 because there were in fact quite a lot of interstate and overseas petitioners who were, of course, excluded from that number. As we would all be aware, Gold Creek Village, which is where the proposed development is, is a tourist place and the people who came there said, “We don’t think KFC is what fits in with these surroundings.” That is very clearly what the shopkeepers of Gold Creek said. That is why they organised the petition. The petition states:
… the proposed KFC DRIVE THROUGH at the Gold Creek Village Shopping Centre does not fit with the character of the Village. The Village includes several heritage listed buildings and the ambience of the Village will be dramatically impacted upon by the construction of the KFC situated at one of two entry points to O’Hanlon Place.
I am sure they are right about that. It is very important that, as we develop Canberra, we take into account the views of the existing community. It does not mean that this is the only thing that is taken into account. Change is obviously necessary, but it is one of the things that must be very seriously taken into account, which is one of the reasons that I am very pleased to table the petition.
The other is, of course, that I am not the world’s biggest fan of KFC. That obviously does not surprise anybody. I have actually been told—I am not sure whether to say this or not, but it is cute—that some people call KFCs “kids’ fattening centres”. That is a bit like what I feel about them, too.
Member interjecting—
MS LE COUTEUR: It does depend how much of it you eat, but clearly in the ACT we are eating too much of either KFC or other things, because apparently six out of 10 Canberrans are either overweight or obese. I am reading this from—
Mr Hanson: Is there only healthy food at Gold Creek?
MS LE COUTEUR: You can get healthy food at Gold Creek; absolutely. The ACT government has been working on this issue for a while. It is something that I think we all agree is a multifaceted problem. One of the things that the government can do is look at where it sites or does not site fast food development. One of the things that amazes me with Canberra as a whole is that we are slightly lower in weight overall than residents of western Sydney but we are more overweight or obese than Gold Coast residents, which is very bizarre.
Apart from being linked with obesity, the other thing that KFC have been linked with, according to Four Corners and the Sydney Morning Herald, is very poor working
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