Page 4858 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017
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and to report back on the findings to the Assembly by the first sitting week in June 2018.
I am very pleased that the government and, in particular, Minister Ramsay, accept that it is important to assess whether the range of services are being provided in their most appropriate location, with suitable opening times, and are best practice and best suit the needs of our community. I also thank the Greens for their support on this motion and, once again, I thank the minister and his staff for their willingness to talk through the issues to reach a sensible and practical move forward to ensure that these vital services are accessible to all Canberrans. I look forward to the minister providing a full report to the Assembly on the outcome of this review by next June, and I commend my motion to the Assembly.
MR RAMSAY (Ginninderra—Attorney-General, Minister for Regulatory Services, Minister for the Arts and Community Events and Minister for Veterans and Seniors) (5.15): I thank Ms Lee for this motion. The government, as has been indicated, will be supporting the amended motion. I thank Ms Lee for her and her office’s work and for their willingness to work with us to reach a motion that has agreement right across the chamber.
Access Canberra was created to service the Canberra community and to make it easier for businesses, community organisations and individuals to get their business done in the territory while ensuring that community safety is preserved. Access Canberra has nine face-to-face customer service locations. The service centres at Gungahlin, Woden, Belconnen and Tuggeranong offer over 250 transactions, across all of the Access Canberra services, as well as touch screen terminals and enhanced concierge services to assist customers to engage with digital options.
The remaining five locations offer specialised services. Mitchell and Dickson shopfronts focus on land, planning and building services, offering a single point of service for the building and conveyancing industries in the ACT. Those teams offer expert advice and support for the more technical services. The Civic drivers licence service is a boutique shopfront offering driver licence renewal and working with vulnerable people application services for people working in Civic. The health protection service at Holder offers food business registration support.
The newly opened Hume motor vehicle inspection station is a purpose-built building offering state-of-the-art facilities, including expanded lanes, making heavy vehicle inspections easier and faster. Multiple bookings are available at the same time, allowing the hardworking staff at the centre to inspect more than one vehicle at a time. In addition, the site has been constructed to enable inspection of larger, heavy combination vehicles—B-doubles, semitrailers, caravans and trailers—which is something that was not available at the Dickson test service station.
It is true that there are varying opening hours across the sites. However, they are generally set to cater for the clientele that typically frequent them. For example, recognising that many of our Gungahlin and Tuggeranong residents need to travel to another location for work or study, there are expanded hours available in those town centres. The other service centres are in Canberra’s primary employment hubs, where
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