Page 1262 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 29 March 2017
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I think many years ago people remember when we weren’t as good with the salt and peppering and there were pockets of disadvantage created as a result of that. We don’t want that to happen again.
The government is repeating mistakes of old. There are a number of developments, as has been highlighted. I will turn firstly to Holder. I live in Holder. I have spoken to many residents. Many residents did not get any notification from the government. They only got notification from the Holder residents action group that this was actually happening. Let me quote from a Holder resident:
We only bought our place a year ago and we bought it because of access to the green space as we have two young children.
And:
There are also a lot of safety issues. It’s a very large development, especially compared to the other public housing proposals. There will be a whole lot more traffic and as there are a lot of children around here we just wonder if the government has taken these things into consideration.
I openly admit I live there. The park that this is being built adjacent to is the park where I take my kids. I know that space very well. It is devastating for the local residents that this is going to be ripped away to make way for light rail. That is what this is about. The location in Chapman is just as bad. I quote again from a local resident:
This proposal to use 15,000 sqm of land for public housing on block 1 section 45 in Chapman is lunacy. It’s completely inappropriate to put public housing on the literal edge of Canberra as far as they can possibly be located away from services and amenities.
This block is about as far away as you can get from—
a whole bunch of amenities. Another resident has said:
This proposal, if implemented, will have definite serious social consequences.
The ACTION bus service to the site runs only hourly outside peak hours and travel time to Civic via Woden Interchange is about one hour. The socially disadvantaged residents will thus be isolated and this will have a great impact on those needing medical/social services …
There are also fire issues that are being canvassed that are of great concern in Chapman—Mr Parton went to that—that actually led to another development being knocked back. In relation to Wright—Mr Parton talked about this as well—a constituent has said to me about the development in Wright:
I and many fellow Wright residents are most disturbed to hear that Minister Yvette Berry has just announced the Public Housing Renewal Taskforce decision that more than half of the Community Facilities area in Wright is to be subdivided and used for medium density housing.
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