Page 2057 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2018
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good investments in our local community in this budget. I commend Ms Cheyne for her motion today.
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra) (11.28), in reply: Madam Assistant Speaker, with your indulgence, I might take a brief opportunity before I begin, for the benefit of some members—not all members—to flag that while I appreciate that there are a variety of accepted ways of saying my surname, I pronounce it “chain”, not “Shane”. That has the added benefit of not confusing me with Mr Rattenbury.
Let me go to the motion. I thank members for their contributions today. I did spend what I would call an inordinate amount of time trying to understand some of the comments from the opposition which, try as I might, I could not logically follow, including that somehow the minister not yet responding to a letter from Miss Burch equates to not keeping a government promise. I am still trying.
Madam Assistant Speaker, as we have heard today, our cool little capital is growing up and it is growing out. Our community is expanding into newer suburbs; our inner city is densifying. In just a few short years, about 430,000 of us will call Canberra home.
As the Chief Minister highlighted, no other government anywhere in Australia delivers as many services as we do. It logically flows that as we grow, the demand for city services increases. This means maintaining infrastructure like roads, playgrounds and footpaths; providing high quality public transport; collecting rubbish; mowing; cleaning; weeding; and removing graffiti. It is a lot of work; it is no easy task; and, as Ms Le Couteur rightly mentioned, it does cost a lot of money.
We have been listening, and this year’s budget does not disappoint. I draw Ms Lawder’s attention to the fact that central to this motion is that we do care and we do take community feedback seriously. We are now engaging community members directly to help decide where money should be spent on our city services—critically, on playgrounds, but on other city services too. I trust that opposition members, including Ms Lawder and Ms Burch, will be encouraging members in their electorates to get involved in this important forum.
I have already touched on the government’s initiatives to support suburban growth, step up municipal services and renew and connect our town centres. Miss Burch appears to be a great advocate for connecting town centres and making it easier to move between suburbs, as I think we all are in this space. She wants people to hop on their bike, figuratively and literally, and engage in active travel outside the inner north and inner south. That is commendable. I look forward to her strong and public support, particularly as the shadow minister for the Belco bikeway which I spoke about extensively today.
There is another significant city service which we are expanding around the city and which will have a big impact on people’s day-to-day activities: our integrated public transport network. As Canberra grows, we will continue to see more people and more vehicles on the road. If our transport network were not built to keep up, we would also see more congestion, more pollution and more road accidents. Unlike other cities,
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