Page 5005 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 28 November 2018

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Another thing we have worked out is that odd numbers generally ascend on the left-hand side of a street. Also—I did not realise this—street numbers generally ascend away from the GPO. This is sensible. One of my advisers was told this by a taxi driver, who obviously had a significant interest in working this stuff out. This was before the days of Google.

This is all a far cry from the many confusing situations in other cities. In Melbourne, for example, Hoddle Street—we all know Hoddle Street, I am afraid—runs north-south. Victoria Parade runs east-west, and it crosses Hoddle Street. At that intersection, Hoddle Street’s numbering restarts in both directions: running north, it starts at No 1, as it does running south. This is very confusing.

I would say that Canberra’s street names and place names are not without some faults. Just around the corner from where I used to live in Phillip there is my favourite pain. On one side, the town centre side of Woden, there is Neptune Street. It has been there for a long time. However, about 10 years ago we did Woden east, and we extended it. We had a perfectly good name, Neptune Street. It is now called Wilbow Street. That is just ridiculous, and we cannot blame it on some century-old or even decades-old change.

Another thing which I imagine all of us who have done quite a bit of doorknocking and letterboxing will be aware of is that there are some places in Canberra—in Belconnen and Gungahlin in particular—where we have one name and it goes in a U-shape so that you have what appear to be multiple different streets all with the same name.

These things are hugely confusing. These are the real place name issues that I would like the ACT government to come to grips with. I do not know what we can do about the past ones, but let’s make sure we do not do it in the future.

The Greens share many of the concerns of people around the country who have raised the issue of some of our favourite places being named after people we are not that proud of anymore. There are certainly names that have been subject to significant community disquiet.

Members would all be aware of the considerable community discussion earlier this year about places named after Captain Cook, as well as the many statues of him. One of the more sensible ways to approach that issue would be, in the places where there is a statue of Cook and the memory of Cook, to give a bit more information about what Captain Cook did: expand the history rather than get rid of the history.

We do not want to have the situation where the Place Names Committee is being judge and jury about what people did in the past, particularly where what people did in the past either was not investigated or, as Mr Parton eloquently talked about, was something that in the past was not in any way regarded as a bad thing; where people were expressing the views of the community they lived in.


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