Page 2049 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2018
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We will also invest in better promoting and better signage for our off-road bikeway network and we will investigate further improvements to connections to make sure that Canberra’s off-road bikeway network can be better utilised.
We will expand the wonderful active streets for schools program, build on work done in previous budgets, and the very popular and very effective work we have begun with the school crossing supervisor program at 20 schools across the ACT. As Ms Le Couteur noted—and I know that my colleagues Ms Cody and Mr Steel, and you, Madam Speaker, also spoke to me at length about the Heysen Street cycle path link between Lyons and Weston Creek—this is a key cycling route that we are really pleased to fund in this year’s budget.
As Ms Cheyne’s motion notes, ensuring the amenity of our suburbs is maintained and providing essential services necessary for our growing city is a priority. The government aims to provide quality services and amenities in every suburb and neighbourhood across the city. And this is a significant focus of the government’s 2018 budget.
In addition to implementing and building on our community consultations on town centre works—as I have just noted, work is underway to significantly improve urban amenity in our town centres, Gungahlin, Tuggeranong, Woden and Belconnen—this budget also invests significant resources in additional city services both to new suburbs and to existing suburbs. These investments include graffiti management, tree maintenance, bus shelter cleaning, focused maintenance at major entry roads into the ACT, and an increased responsiveness to tree-related public inquiries.
The government will also be delivering the adopt-a-park scheme, a Labor election commitment from 2016. It is scheduled to commence next year and will provide small grants to volunteer groups to achieve cleaner, greener parks and increase community pride in local parks and open spaces. I note Ms Le Couteur’s comments around the adopt-a-park scheme and I too am very excited about the opportunities for communities to come together to propose community-led activities in their neighbourhoods. And we note there have been previous successes around this, including Lyneham Commons, which comes to mind as a wonderful community initiative in Lyneham.
We will also increase the annual mowing program to have increased capacity to manage grass growth, particularly following wet periods across Canberra, and to improve the look and feel of our city. In addition to more mowing, the budget will also provide for greater weed control. This will include hand-weeding suburban shrub beds and chemical control of weeds in kerbs, gutters and around roadway barriers. While also providing improved amenity, this additional weed control will prevent unnecessary damage to existing infrastructure.
Every year the ACT increases its urban footprint by way of establishing new suburbs and redeveloping older suburbs. In the last financial year the suburbs of Lawson, Denman Prospect, Throsby, Moncrieff and Taylor underwent major extensions. These areas are now funded with city services to ensure the public realm is maintained. This
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