Category Archives: 2024 Election Blog

ACT Election 2024 Housing, Homelessness, Planning and Seniors Housing

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Introduction

No party or independent grouping has a comprehensive seniors’ housing policy that covers all forms of housing for ACT seniors.

The information below covers Greens, Labor, Liberals and the Independents for Canberra. There are other independents – Strong & House Teams and Fiona Carrick however they do not have anything like the detailed policies of the other groups, so have not been covered.

Parties and Candidates are releasing updated and newer policies as the election campaign proceeds. Sometimes policies and commitments are found across multiple sites. Please check their sites to make sure you have up to date and accurate information.

The current Labor/Greens government is undertaking several housing initiatives.

Greens

Social & Affordable Housing:

▪ Build & buy 10,000 new public homes over the next ten years – they have provided costings for this on their website, aim to have 10% of ACT housing as public housing.

▪ Establish a publicly owned developer & builder for public housing

▪ Create a prefabrication manufacturing hub for public housing

▪ Initiate a pilot project for homeowners to sell their homes to the government for use as public housing

▪ Create more accessible & secure homes for people with disabilities

▪ Fund Housing ACT to be a landlord of choice

▪ In-source & adequately fund repairs & maintenance for all public housing properties.

Planning, Development & other:

Renters:

▪ Legislate a 2-year rent freeze, a 2% cap on rent increases afterwards, & ban all forms of rent bidding

▪ Establish an independentRental Commissioner to deliver real protection for renters

▪ Create a portable bond transfer scheme so moving from one rental to another doesn’t break the bank

▪ Secure a permanent Rent Relief Fund

▪ Fund an accessibility grants program to for renters to get accessibility improvements to their home when they need it.

▪ There is also an environmental policy for public housing. Details at https://greens.org.au/act/policies/housing#renters

Source: https://greens.org.au/act/policies/housing Accessed 22/09/24

Note re seniors: Greens also will explore establishing a public retirement village.

Greens also have a detailed policy on preventing homelessness at: https://greens.org.au/sites/default/files/2024-09/2024%20Initiative%20-%20Preventing%20Homelessness.pdf

Labor

Social & Affordable Housing

The only specific mention in the Labor plan is more affordable housing in Strathnairn.

However there is more detail on the ACT government site & budget summaries – below taken from this document – note govt is Labor/Greens government.

“….By 2026–27 our goal is to:

  • deliver 400 new public housing homes
  • renew 1,000 public housing properties.

The 2024-25 ACT Budget includes the release of $46 million previously provisioned to continue the delivery of the Growing & Renewing Public Housing Program.

Funding in this budget will support the continued delivery of high-quality, accessible & energy efficient homes that meet the needs of tenants now & into the future.

The Commonwealth Government is also providing $50 million to support the ACT’s public housing.

See more detail on page below from ACT government site & budget summaries

Planning, Development & other:

▪ 30,000 more homes by 2030 including new suburban housing, more townhouses and duplexes in existing suburbs.

▪ More houses close to local shops /services and housing choices.

▪ Build to rent development in Turner.

▪ Work with Commonwealth to deliver thousands of new homes at the CSIRO Ginninderra site.

▪ More affordable housing in Strathnairn. Release more land

▪ Work with the University of Canberra on the implementation of their campus masterplan, which includes more housing, commercial and community facilities in Belconnen.

▪ Work with the operators of Westfield Belconnen to explore options for build-to-rent housing, providing more affordable homes in the town centre.

▪ Work with Southpoint on potential housing opportunities in the Tuggeranong Town Centre.

Source: www.actlabor.org.au/our-plan Accessed 21/9/24

Notes: Current affordable guidelines require that Build to rent projects must contain a minimum of 15% affordable housing so the majority is not affordable housing.

Affordable housing is usually available to people who do not meet the means test for public and community housing but earn up to the incomes key workers like teachers, nurses, police etc get paid.

Liberals

Social & Affordable Housing:

Deliver 125,000 new dwellings in the capital by 2050- see under Planning, below..

10% will be social housing – i.e. 12,500 social properties over 20 years

Under policies on their website (see link below ) the focus is on increasing affordable housing for people by enabling the community housing sector to build more homes.

▪ Up to 2,000 affordable and social housing properties. (presumably they mean in the next term of government).

▪ Supporting key workers with affordable housing

▪ Attracting investment for community housing

▪ Support for our public housing

Planning, Development & other:

▪ Developing Kowen as a new urban district and town centre for Canberra

▪ Commence development at Symonston and work with Federal Government to unlock former CSIRO Ginninderra land for housing development

▪ accelerate land release in suburbs currently under development such as Macnamara, Whitlam and Kenny

▪ auction all single residential blocks of land available ‘over the counter’ owned by the Suburban Land Agency in Jacka and Whitlam with 10% of those reserved for first home buyers offered at 75% of market value

▪ allow separately titled dual occupancies on eligible RZ1 blocks larger than 800m2 to maximise land use in suburban zones

▪ promote mixed-use residential development in CZ2 and CZ3 retail precincts and trades areas to encourage residential development in established commercial centres

fast-track planning approvals for the proposed Thoroughbred Park redevelopment for housing

▪ protect the ecologically significant Western Edge from future development by ceasing all investigative studies of the area

Sources:

https://canberraliberals.org.au/news/2024/09/19/canberra-liberals-announce-plan-deliver-125000-new-dwellings-2050 Accessed 22/9/24

https://freshopportunity.org/policies/affordablehousing Accessed 23/9/24

Independents for Canberra

Social & Affordable Housing:

The Independents policy is set out in the link below.

▪ Guarantee Housing ACT capital and recurrent funding to transform system and achieve following by 2030:

“1. Reduce priority housing list wait time to 30 day average;
2. Reduce high needs list to 90 day average; and
3. ACT rank first in Australia for public housing dwelling condition.”

▪ Improve customer service, particularly for maintenance and repairs.

▪ Maximise Commonwealth funding.

▪ Increase integration of community and public housing systems, introduce a territory wide digital social housing register.

There is more detail under Housing as a Right – What we stand for – use link below.

Planning, Development & other:

▪ Facilitate & scale implementation of novel housing developments including modular housing, cohousing, build to rent and tiny homes – for example, through planning designations, design guides, and land disposal policies.

▪ Establish a Strata Title Commissioner to protect people in apartments and townhouses.

▪ Accelerate timeline for Ginnindera development.

▪ Ensure energy policy includes measure to increase energy efficiency and electrification of rental and social housing properties

▪ Adequate wrap around services for people subjected to family, domestic and sexual violence.

▪ Implementing a dedicated child and youth homelessness action plan, co-designed with the community sector, to eliminate homelessness among children and young people in the ACT.

Source: www.independentsforcanberra.com/policy Accessed 21/9/24

ACT Elections 2024

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Education Policy

17 September 2024

Both Labor and Liberal parties have now announced, as the major commitment, that they support the implementation of the recommendations of the Literacy and Numeracy Education Expert Panel, released in April 2024, and have promised to allocate significant funding, particularly for resources.

There is no doubt in my mind that the recommendations of the Expert Panel should be implemented but a much broader reform agenda is needed to reverse the current inequality of our educational system and to ensure a quality education for all students in the ACT.

Federal/ACT context

Crispin Hull reported in The Canberra Times on August 20, 2024, that in 2023 “state schools were getting just $11 billion of the total federal $29 billion spend and private (including Catholic) schools got the remaining $18 billion”. The ACT is impacted as much by this as it is by local systemic problems because federal funding contributes to a two-tiered educational landscape in the ACT, as it does elsewhere.

While federal funding may be outside the scope of an ACT education policy at the present time, I mention it here as an underlying structural problem and as an area where aspiration and discussion/lobbying is urgently required.

Given the Federal/ACT context I believe all effective educational policies in the ACT should sit under a powerful statement of educational equality. For example,

  • We will strive for equitable educational experiences for all students in the ACT, committing to ending the unfair funding arrangements whereby private schools enjoy better environments and resources than those in the government system. Taxpayer funds should be directed to the government system which educates most students, including most students with a multicultural background, a disability, Indigenous students, and disadvantaged students. This is to create a cohesive society where the potential of all young people is valued as a personal and social asset.
  • We are committed to affirming the value of teachers in the ACT public school system, so teachers can be effective and successful, and regain their professional self-esteem. Significant change at the system and school level is required to do this.
  • We support the implementation of the recommendations of the Literacy and Numeracy Expert Panel.

Rationale

  • Education policy has not been an election issue in ACT for a long time, if ever. Even with the long poor governance of the ACT Education Minister and Directorate, there is a listlessness about things ever changing. The same applies to the level of federal funding directed to the states for private schools. Many people believe it is unfair, but it has been going on for so long that it seems a permanent, unchangeable reality. There is an opportunity with an upcoming election to open a debate about what sort of society we want to live in. And with all the things that taxpayer funds could be spent on, is a funding anomaly like this justified in a secular society?
  • Canberra is an ideal location to have this debate and a new, strong direction. We have the highest percentage of students in private schooling in Australia. If we look at voting on other issues such as a long preference for voting Labor, same-sex marriage and The Voice, Canberra people favour inclusivity and a democratic spirit. The percentage of students in private schooling here is discordant with other evidence of what Canberra people prefer. It may well reflect a fear that the government system is performing poorly overall, which it is, and parents are worried that their child will not receive an adequate education at a local public school. At least six reviews into the ACT education system in as many years have indicated that not all is well. The Expert Panel is the latest and builds on the earlier findings.
  • A ‘big picture view’ of education policy and direction is required not only to motivate and recharge voters’ idealism but to avoid band-aid solutions and the resulting waste of money. The ACT ran a Literacy and Numeracy Field Officer program with over twenty primary school and five high school specially trained Field Officers in 2010-2016. The experiences of the Field Officers varied depending on the school, with some schools welcoming the support and many others finding that it did not work with their autonomous philosophy. (Professor Kaye Lowe of the University of Canberra did a review of the Field Officer Program during this period but I no longer have a copy of it and can’t find reference to it.) In any case and years later, any benefits were short lived. The philosophy of the ACT system/school needs to align with any reform agenda, for success to occur and to avoid the waste of millions more dollars.
  • Better learning environments are not superficial things. They go to the heart of allowing students to develop their potential. Many government schools in Canberra no longer have a librarian or even a library. Some private schools employ coaches for debating, sport, and extension academic activities, or to help teachers by marking essays. They can afford to pay teachers more, and are thus less likely to have teacher shortages. Students in mouldy, rundown schools with broken furniture, struggling to attract staff, simply do not feel good about being there and neither do the staff. Some schools have the money to hire educational experts to present courses for staff development, others not. Some students have their lunch in shaded courtyards with good canteens, others stand in a concrete yard and there is no canteen. Typically, private schools have their own buses to transport students to outside opportunities, whereas this is rare in the government system. I am not suggesting that students need luxuries to receive a good education. The problem is we have a deeply inequitable system of haves and have-nots, which conditions children to accept that a deeply inequitable society is satisfactory. This partially explains the dissatisfaction and shortage of teachers. The government system is the largest employer, but these teachers find that working conditions make it difficult to do a good job. If teachers were treated as professionals, it would be a far more attractive form of employment. In my experience, working conditions, rather than salary, are why teachers want to leave.
  • Private schools usually screen students when they enrol. They may ask to see the latest NAPLAN report or ask students to sit a test where they will need to get a C grade to enrol. Once enrolled, the student may not be a ‘good fit’ and may be asked to leave if their behaviour/performance is not up to expectations. These students are likely to enrol in a government school. The new school then must manage both the behaviour and the sense of failure in the student. Private schools are not doing the educational heavy lifting. They should not be funded to run boutique establishments.
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October 2024 ACT Election Blog

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Is housing really a 2024 election issue?

29 August 2024

This year ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr has promised a focus on health, housing, cost of living, and infrastructure.

Housing unaffordability and homelessness are getting a lot of attention across the country, but is the ACT government really planning a turn-around in housing?

ACTCOSS and ACT Shelter think they should be, and their focus on social housing reveals some unsettling facts. Only 5.7% of households in Canberra live in social housing; in 1989 this figure was 12.2%. The cost of private rental is a big part of our serious cost of living crisis, and the CEOs of ACTCOSS and ACT Shelter want a complete reform of our housing policy.

These two organisations, and others, perennially press for more affordable housing; but it hasn’t happened. It has been promised: but the promises seems to get lost in the build. Even the most urgent cases of need will be waiting for years to be allocated public housing in Canberra.

The Minister for Housing, Yvette Berry, is pretty pumped about new social housing builds, though. Earlier this month she said:

“We are reaching an exciting point of the program where construction projects are being completed almost every week, delivering more and more homes for Canberrans experiencing vulnerability or disadvantage,”

For a reality check, Jon Stanhope and Khalid Ahmed writing this same month in the City News say this:

“It is remarkable that in every year of the three terms of the current Greens-Labor coalition government, the stock of public housing in Canberra, relative to the population, has dropped.”

Perhaps this will all change after the new Territory Plan is released at the end of September. The government’s track record though would argue against hope. ACT Greens are certainly saying the right things about housing, but again it’s hard to know whether to abandon pessimism.

No one in the ACT government appears game to take money from other projects and put it where (you might argue) it most needs to be, which is ensuring that everyone has a secure roof over their head. This is despite the fact that when money is spent on secure and affordable housing, the return in reduced spending and demand on other services has always been shown to easily cover the initial cost.

Another question is what kind of housing actually is being built. The ACT has a limited supply of land, and it hurts to see it all go to expensive and badly designed flats. Quite a while back there we were promised a “handful” of projects to test “innovative forms of housing to address the emerging needs of Canberrans”. This promised handful are proceeding at a crawl, if at all. Two Common Ground buildings are finished, one in Gungahlin in 2015 and another in Dickson in 2022; a glacial pace of progress but at least something to show, moving some homeless people into a place of their own. On the other hand the Watson cohousing project has come to a complete stop due to government inaction. Members who have waited for years are once again having to walk away with nothing to show for money and time put in. Ironically, the smaller Stellulata project in Ainslie, which went ahead on its own because of a perception that nothing was happening with the larger project, is now featured on the ACT Planning website.

Why has Australia found itself in such a mess with its housing policy? We were unlucky to follow a Thatcherite model of encouraging home ownership and shifting wealth upwards, partly achieved by selling off public housing. The years under Howard and his neoliberal successors cost us missed opportunities to look elsewhere for successful and uncontroversial housing models such as exist in the rest of the world. These models not only give greater social stability, community support and equality, they are also cheaper and more fuel efficient to cool and heat. Meanwhile Australia races away from the pack, building single-family houses which are now the largest in the world.

The ACT is a relatively wealthy place. Surely we could make some imaginative changes and do something good in housing. Check out the Labor, Greens, independent and perhaps Liberal plans to fix this mess. This is a core issue for all of us.

A A Gunn

Solving the housing crisis – welcome Liam Young

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13 May 2024

“An architect’s skills are completely wasted on making buildings.” Liam Young, an architect and film maker, warns of the “catastrophic nature of business as usual.”

Before we look at the housing issue in Canberra and how it will affect voting intentions in the upcoming ACT election, take a few minutes to look at Planet City, a story of a fictional city for the entire population of the earth.

Photo: Liam Young delivers a TED talk against a background of his futuristic city. www.ted.com/talks/

Australian Liam Young has a grand concept. He says it evolved organically from his travels and from discussions about how the world could respond to climate change.

So, a giant city housing all the world’s population on just 0.02% of earth? A self-contained, high-tech democracy where everyone has what they need and no more?

The giant metropolis would have a similar density to the existing city of Manila, where 1.8 million people live in an area of 15.56 square miles. It would be built of existing materials and no new resources would need to be mined or extracted.

The United Nations estimate is that there are more than 110 million people worldwide who are homeless by having been forcibly displaced from their homes due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, and events seriously disturbing public order.

The creation of the metropolis would allow a slow retreat from the world we know and allow the earth to slowly heal by returning to wilderness. Stolen lands would be returned, divisions would fade.

YouTube, The World Around: A city for 10 billion people. Liam Young presents Planet City, https://youtu.be/CL3g5OPLnoc

Pam Blakeley

Public transport and a tale of two cities

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Pam Blakeley has launched our new Blog, focusing on the upcoming ACT election in October 2024

9 April 2024

The public transport issue, particularly the extension to light rail, is again shaping up as a controversial ACT election issue. The discussion this time is more strident and desperate, and linked to other critical issues. The need to finance more public housing and better health provisions in the context of the ACT budget deficit are being raised as reasons to scrap light rail.

Canberra and Wellington, New Zealand, sister cities since 2016, tie as the most remote capital cities in the world. They both have populations of just under half a million and are growing. Many workers in each city are employed in politics, government, education, and services. Young people come for education and jobs. The standard of living in each city is high relative to the national standard, and New Zealand is facing many of the same social problems as Australia.

Visiting Wellington for a 12-day holiday in December 2022, we were struck by the physical beauty of Wellington, spread around, and rising in green volcanic mountains above a harbour the size of Sydney Harbour. Wellington has water.

The other striking thing was how well Wellington works as a city. We stayed in an Airbnb in the suburb of Karori, 4 km from the city centre. We used public transport the whole time (the Snapper card covers everything), and travelled on buses, trains, and ferries. We went out at night to stand-up comedy shows, restaurants and music venues. No need to hire a car, get a taxi or an uber. We went by bus/train outside the city to the boutique wine region of Martinborough, we caught the ferry across the harbour to Eastbourne where we ate seafood chowder and cheesy scones and we visited Petone, the original site of Wellington, by train.

We walked a lot too. We caught a bus up Mt Victoria, the highest point of Wellington, on a hair-raising steep and narrow road. We saw native tui birds, walked down to Oriental Beach, and then along the wide boardwalk with its crab shacks and oyster fritter stalls, past the Te Papa Museum and back to Courtenay Place to catch the bus back to Karori. None of us had ever spent more than a day in Wellington before and yet it was as comfortable as being at home. No, a lot more comfortable. We loved the way bus passengers always thanked the driver when getting off the bus. ‘Thank you, driver!’ Fair enough too, as the driver had just safely negotiated narrow and steep roads and hairpin bends unlike any in Canberra, with a good-natured muscularity and can-do attitude.

Wellington does not have light rail, but it has an urban train system which services outlying suburbs and goes to other cities. These trains are estimated to carry 12 million passengers a year. Buses service almost every part of Wellington and most run through Courtenay Place in the CBD, a bus hub, and take in Wellington Railway Station.

We wondered why Canberra does not have such an efficient, well connected and well patronised public transport system as Wellington. What is the best system for Canberra with its own special qualities and requirements and its own unique natural beauty. In this election year, who do we vote for to provide it? Indeed, what do most Canberrans want?

We cannot copy Wellington. Canberra has four town centres and potentially five. We have evolved as a city for cars. I have not seen the number or size of car parks we have here, in any other city in the world. It feels anachronistic. The car parks are ugly and take up a lot of land. Imagine the gardens and public and social housing that could be accommodated if some of the prime sites in central Civic, Woden and Belconnen in particular, were used differently. Looking ahead, how many more roads and carparks are going to be needed if we continue this way?

As Canberra has traditionally been a car city, we have neglected other aspects of transport infrastructure in a way that other small cities have not. The cost now to remediate this situation is phenomenal even if it is shared with the federal government. It is an unenviable task for any ACT government to implement infrastructure that would have been better started decades ago. We are almost starting from scratch and with no clear idea of what we want. But we do need to think ahead. Canberra is growing and becoming denser. The reliance on cars and ‘ghost buses’ is not sustainable in the long run. The existing bus service does a good job conveying workers short distances in peak hours. But the city is not connected properly. It is a difficult city to move around in and not welcoming to visitors or those without a car.

Canberra has voted twice now to go ahead with light rail. The existing line from Gungahlin to the City is popular with those who have access to it. It is a comfortable form of transport, easier for the elderly, those with a mobility issue or parents dealing with strollers. You don’t need a timetable, they come every few minutes. They carry hundreds of passengers at one time. It is an effective form of mass transport and doesn’t clog up the roads. At night, the rail stops are well lit and highly visible, and they feel safer than bus interchanges or suburban bus stops. We can already see greater density along the light rail route in north Canberra, although this is controversial.

The choice is not between light rail and buses. The challenge is to work out a hybrid system of public transport that allows us to move easily around our widely dispersed city and to enjoy it. We need a system which will work well into the future even if modifications are needed at times, as they will be. We need to think about how our city could be warmer and more hospitable. As individuals it is vital for us all to think about how much reliance and money, we and our children and grandchildren want to put into car and road transport in the future.

Our best solution for now might be to continue building light rail to provide effective and rapid mass transit between the town centres, with buses, cycleways and walking paths radiating out into the suburbs beyond. Ideally, the airport and Canberra Railway Station would be integrated into the system one day. There would still be a need for cars.

It seems fallacious to think that we would be better off by scrapping plans for light rail to Woden and just getting more buses. The public has lost faith in the existing bus system and needs to see a big change in the role of buses in Canberra’s public transport system.

Nor does a priority of building and maintaining more roads for buses and cars into the future feel like the way to make Canberra a better connected, more appealing city. It’s expensive too. A quick example is Majura Parkway. Completed in 2016 and half funded by the federal government, it cost $288 million for 11.5 kilometres. It would cost far more today.

I’m leaving this blog with more questions than answers but that’s OK. Public transport in Canberra is important in this city which stretches for 60 kilometres from to south. There will be further public discussion on this issue in the leadup to the ACT election in October and hopefully some interesting and constructive ideas will emerge. but looking forward to the day when I hear passengers calling ‘thank you, driver!’ each time.

Pam Blakeley

Swapping policies for principles, the Independents for Canberra ask us to trust their integrity.

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27 February 2024

We know how much our Vintage Reds members enjoy an election. The cut and thrust of ideas, the chance to make our world a better and fairer place! The sheer thrill of orators taking to the stump to stir our idealism! I decided to forget mowing the lawn and get along to the town hall meeting.

The inaugural meeting of the group known as Independents for Canberra, launched by Clare Carnell (Party Director) and Tom Emerson, was held on February 11. This meeting received scant attention in the media, apart from a mention of a stoush between two attendees which ironically showed the difficulties inherent in the concept of serving “the community”, as if community forms a single entity. Deeply held differences within one group in the ACT came to the fore in an exchange between two Indigenous elders.

Community was the theme and promise of the meeting, with the chance to elect politicians who listen and will act for their communities, and can vote freely and with integrity, unfettered by a party machine.

About 150 people attended this meeting, a good turnout for a Sunday morning.

After an acknowledgement of country by Auntie Violet Sheriden, chair Clare Carnell (a barrister and ANU law lecturer) outlined the vision. It was to pledge that Independents for Canberra politicians will be accountable and community focused. They will listen and reply to every contact and phone call, and will show in their actions that they are there to serve the people who voted them in. Time for an end to arrogant politicians who you can never get hold of.

Michael Moore then spoke. He quoted Mal Meninga as saying that when Meninga stood as an independent candidate, the things he hoped to achieve were integrity and access, equity, and sustainability. Moore says that Independents should remain unaligned to political parties, and that the ACT Greens have not done this. Independents should focus on increasing accountability, allowing stability and good budgeting. Moore said that while independent politicians need policies, they also must be across a vast range of topics. He noted that the Hare-Clark electoral system, which is used in ACT and Tasmania, favours teams of independents rather than individual independents.

Kate Chaney, an independent from WA, was a guest and spoke of her own experience in being elected in 2022 into a former Liberal seat. She said the major parties were no longer listening to or serving the needs of people, only of the machine. She said a positive campaign was essential, and recommended that independent candidates focus on policy, not on attack. She does not hold the balance of power but takes the democratic process very seriously and believes that it is vital to be connected to the community. She said the best question an independent need to ask of themselves is what the right thing is to do on a long-term basis.

David Pocock, also a guest speaker, gave a short speech. He stated his love of Canberra, his belief that Canberrans love Canberra and that he values being free of a party line. He believes that 95% of party politicians have no idea what they are voting for. The point for an independent politician is to find a sensible way forward, a way that looks after us and our children.

Tom Emerson, “another bald man with a big heart”, and David Pocock’s staffer, followed. He suggested that we, the audience, were probably swinging voters. He outlined his background as an ANU philosophy graduate from a political Labor family. He currently runs a movement studio called Praksis in Canberra. He said an independent should represent the community only, not a political party and that integrity was essential. Then came the pitch.

Emerson explained that Independents for Canberra are looking for more candidates who are active and accessible community members, answerable for errors and understanding of why people disagree. These will be locals who back themselves and can back others, and will give help when help is needed, for example, regarding public housing and health care. Emerson was passionate on what Canberra could be like; a capital that leads the nation by using innovative ways to solve problems, stronger communities, high value given to the natural environment and a sense of ambition for our city. More people need to be brought into the political tent. The goal is to get one independent elected in each electorate, thus bringing pressure on the government to serve the community.

Then followed a Q and A session.

Auntie Violet said she was considering standing as an independent with the independent team. She expressed concerns about small block sizes and too much traffic in Gungahlin where she lives. She does not support stage 2 of the light rail and believes high speed buses are better. She said Canberra needs representatives who understand their communities.

In reply, Tom Emerson said there were many points of view on the extension to light rail, depending in part on where people live.

Then followed a question from the audience on what exactly is ‘a party’ of independents. Emerson answered that it needs to be a group to get elected, but all representatives will be free to vote independently.

In response to a question from the floor, Emerson said he saw three key issues facing the electorate at the upcoming election: housing including public housing, health and mental health and the future of our city both physically and in its character.

Bill Stefaniak, Convenor of the Belco Party, gave a message of support for the new Independents for Canberra. Stefaniak, incidentally, wrote in his column in the Canberra Weekly magazine of 15/2/24 that ‘as we approach this year’s local election, the issue currently on most Canberrans minds is the length of the grass in our city’.

A man who identified himself as a Ngambri man put forward the view that independent candidates should reflect the needs of women and the multiculturalism of Canberra. Aunty Violet took offence at him speaking and they had a stoush, resolved finally when David Pocock suggested they continue privately, and that the meeting was about positivity.

Then, right at the end of a long meeting, a voice from the floor belonging to Gary Petherbridge raised some local issues which he felt needed to be addressed by any candidate seeking election. He felt housing was a big issue, including high rates for houseowners, exorbitant rents and strata levies, endemic building faults in new builds, maintenance problems from using substandard products. He said our public schools are in crisis and that he believed respect and values should be at the heart of change.

But town hall meeting exhaustion had set in, and it was time for a change ……

Read the 10 principles underpinning the Independents for Canberra at www.independentsforcanberra.com.

Pam Blakeley