Page 857 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018
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So many words from Ms Le Couteur—the longest amendment I have ever seen her move in the Assembly—but so little action, so little meaning. This is the bible according to Ms Le Couteur here. Mr Hanson’s motion was very simple and very to the point, not particularly political—“You’ve heard from these people, you know what they want. They’ve done all the hard work.” They have taken a lot of design requirements away from the department. They have put in thousands of dollars’ worth of effort, not to mention pretty substantive community consultation, but that is not good enough. Apparently you can only be heard by this government if you engage in processes that have been developed by this government for this government to manipulate and to say what they think you should have in your suburb.
So despite approaching its 50th birthday, Waramanga continues to be neglected and ignored by this government. It is actually worse than that; Waramanga has put up with a hell of a lot in just the past year alone. There have been numerous break-ins at the shops. We have had a bikie shooting on the street that landed a man bleeding on his front lawn and a toddler trying to put a car fire out with a garden hose. This community is suffering. And if we backtrack to the last period of government when Mr Rattenbury had the portfolio that was then referred to as TAMS, I tried to convince him that the people of Waramanga wanted the post box moved back up next to the newsagency. Another tin ear. This government listen through a tin ear. They are not interested in what the community wants; they are interested in policies and procedures that they have developed for their own outcomes.
The community knows best what the community needs, and they are paying through the nose for the services of this government. And if you spent even five minutes walking around the nearest playground to the shops, which is five minutes up the road, and had a little look at the paint peeling off the backboard of the basketball ring and the faded colouring on the absolute rubbish play equipment there, you would feel that an injustice is being done to this community. But I would be very surprised if Ms Fitzharris has made the effort.
While there are a number of dodgy old parks already in Waramanga, there is no dedicated nature play space or adequate public realm immediately servicing the shops. Anyone who has lived in Waramanga knows that the existing playgrounds are old, small and well past the end of their life cycle. They offer hardly any play activities. There is little to no parking or accessibility to the playgrounds that exist. They are dilapidated, they are in disrepair. They do not provide for a wide range of people or activities, and they certainly do not capture anything unique about Waramanga.
The people of Waramanga feel neglected. They feel like the government does not care about them, and they are probably right. Residents do not feel like they are listened to; they feel like they are patronised. They are asked for plenty of money in rates and in stamp duty when people buy into this suburb. When young families scrape together everything they have to buy into the suburb like this which has got pretty good access to the city and so on, it is embarrassing.
This proposal would unify Waramanga by improving the connections between existing play spaces such as sports ovals and parkland corridors. The urban streets and
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