Speech in the ACT Legislative Assembly
23 June 2009
Mr Speaker, last week I, like the other Nicholls residents, received a letter from Tony Gill, the Director of Roads ACT, regarding the Nicholls Shops car park. I am very pleased to read in the letter that the ACT Government is not proceeding with converting the car park to one way traffic.
As the Assembly is well aware from previous debates on this issue, the completion of this plan would have created more problems than it solved. It would not have addressed the problem of capacity or loading zones. It would have created traffic problems at the Paisley Street and Kelleway Avenue intersection, and wouldn’t have widened the car park.
A public meeting on 29 April 2009 was held to discuss the Nicholls Shops car park. The Government’s design was unanimously rejected by the meeting – not one person expressed support for the Government’s proposal. Although, I must say, it wasn’t clear where Ms Porter stood on the issue when she spoke.
Before this meeting, the community hadn’t been consulted properly, and it definitely showed. The community only knew about the meeting because I took the initiative to distribute notice of the meeting by letterbox . Roads ACT only managed to letterbox about 80 homes, whereas I was able to letterbox over 2,000 homes in Nicholls in preparation for the meeting. Most people who attended only heard about the meeting through my letterboxing, and I am glad they were able to come to ensure the Government got the message.
It is clear from the meeting that the Government must: widen the car park, continue two way traffic at the Kelleway Avenue roundabout, provide more parking bays, and not divert extra traffic down Paisley Street.
In last week’s letter to residents, Tony Gill stated that Roads ACT will not be progressing with the one-way traffic and will liaise with the ACT Planning and Land Authority, regarding “current and future parking demands”. He states that a new option won’t be presented to the Nicholls community until “later in the year”.
I am worried that a simple infrastructure project is taking so long, and that there are no timeframes in this letter. It took more than 6 weeks to get this letter out, and it is remarkably short on detail. In fact, the lack of professionalism this Government is showing on the issue is demonstrated by the fact that the Government can’t even spell the name of the suburb correctly in the letter, not once, but twice. Twice the letter from Roads ACT talks about the suburb of ‘Nicholl’. This is indicative of this Government’s bungled approach to the ongoing issue of the Nicholls Shops car park.
This has been an ongoing issue for the Government.
On 23 August 2004 the former Minister for Urban Services, Bill Wood, wrote to the former Member for Ginninderra, Bill Stefaniak, and stated:
I am advised by officers of roads ACT that the traffic and parking arrangements at the Nicholls shopping centre were recently assessed. This assessment identified the need to modify the access road to the shopping centre and to widen the car park to facilitate the movements of vehicles within the car park. The design work for these improvements is in progress and the implementation of the works is expected to commence in October 2004.
So what’s happened in the meantime? John Hargreaves was the Minister between late 2004 and late 2008. I wonder if that’s why it’s taken until now to get some progress on this issue.
If Bill Wood could give a timeframe of two months for progressing from decision, to design work, to implementation, why can’t Roads ACT do that now?
I ask the Government to consider all options for expediting this work. I ask the Government whether any of the $8m from the Shopping Centre Upgrade Program (Budget Paper 5, page 51) or the Additional Funding or Repairs listed on page 73 of Budget Paper 3.
I would urge the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services to show some leadership on this issue, make a decision, have some clear timelines, and fix the car park. Nicholls residents have endured enough of this Government’s incompetence and inability to even get the most basic local infrastructure right. It is clear what the residents of Nicholls want, and deserve, and it’s about time the Government fixed this mess.
