Page 4704 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 31 October 2017
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There is a common theme here, of course, besides our very engaged community, and that is that there is a very poor standard of government service delivery in the ACT. What is very obvious, from the many emails, phone calls and letters received, is that the ACT government’s fix my street program is not working, leaving many disgruntled residents with unresolved issues—issues such as broken and dangerous footpaths, tree litter, broken branches and leaves, broken streetlights and urban maintenance of public areas. The list is long.
In response to a question on notice, the minister informed us that it took between four and eight days for matters raised on the fix my street website to be resolved. From the contacts we have had, what does “resolved” mean? Does this mean the matter has now been subcontracted elsewhere or that some public servants have read and responded to the issue?
Let me give a couple of examples. I will give the reference numbers to these cases so that the minister can get back to us on these issues. The first case is of a constituent waiting on some streetlights to be fixed. The reference number is 170629-002427. In fact, this resident has been waiting four months to get their streetlights fixed. Maybe the minister could get back to me by the end of the day on why this has been left unresolved since 29 June. In response to an estimates question on notice, Ms Fitzharris stated that it took 10 days for a lamp change. I would like to point out that it has now been 124 days since the request was lodged, and the matter not fixed.
Let me give another example—reference No 170311-000568—another one of the many that have contacted us about the lack of action resulting from the fix my street website. This person asked us to investigate the absence of any management of the public garden areas within the suburb of Casey after getting a very unengaged response through the fix my street website. The response from the subject matter expert was:
It is accepted practice in the ACT that maintenance of nature strips, including rain gardens, is undertaken by the resident or lessee of the adjoining leased land.
As our constituent rightly questioned:
Are members of the community expected to divide up public areas that are not their own nature strips and manage them themselves? I think this is a standard answer from a Public Servant who has no awareness of the issue or really cares about the local community that is not theirs.
And maybe that is the case. After all, a little more investigation by this public servant would have told them that the areas in question were not nature strips next to housing but public land areas which are the responsibility of government public services. Maybe it is not this public servant’s fault at all. Maybe the issue goes deeper than this. The government wants the community to engage, and it has. To date it has lodged over 47½ thousand complaints. Maybe this tells us a different story—the story of inadequate funding and understaffing and lack of adequate resources.
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