GCC President Alan Kerlin recently appeared before the ACT Legislative Assembly's Select Committee on Estimates. He was invited to give a summary of key positives and negatives from the ACT Budget.

Following is an extract of his testimony from the draft Hansard text:

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY FOR THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES 2010‑2011

(Reference: Appropriation Bill 2010-2011)

Members:
MS M HUNTER (The Chair)
MR Z SESELJA (The Deputy Chair)
MR J HARGREAVES
MS A BRESNAN
MR B SMYTH

PROOF TRANSCRIPT OF EVIDENCE (DRAFT)
CANBERRA
THURSDAY, 13 MAY 2010

KERLIN, MR ALAN, President, Gungahlin Community Council

THE CHAIR: Welcome to this public hearing of the Select Committee on Estimates. Thank you, Mr Kerlin, for coming this afternoon and representing the Gungahlin Community Council. We have approximately 30 minutes set aside for this afternoon’s discussion. Could you confirm for the record that you understand the privileges implications from the statement that is before you?

Mr Kerlin: Yes, I understand them.

THE CHAIR: Thank you. Would you like to start with a brief opening statement?

Mr Kerlin: Sure, thank you. Summarising the budget, I would have to say that there are a lot of positives for Gungahlin in there, although there are also some disappointing areas, not entirely unexpected in some respects.

We have had quite a focus in the last few budgets on road-building projects out our way, but, apart from fixing the mistake of Gungahlin Drive, the majority of these projects have all been about facilitating further land sales. They have not really been about servicing the needs of Gungahlin residents and, as you would be aware, most of us have to commute out for virtually everything, from swimming lessons to our jobs.

In the budget this time around, though, there was a distinct emphasis on servicing the transport needs of locals, and it was pleasing to see that that emphasis was in the direction of public transport rather than more road construction. The park‑and‑ride at EPIC is something that we have been campaigning for for more than three years, and it will ensure the success of the Redex buses, I believe. Not only that, it will also be good for the people of North Canberra, because with the Morisset Road, the Sandford Road extension, going through, it will give the opportunity for the EPIC park‑and‑ride to also intercept a lot of commuters from over the border. Instead of going through Watson, Hackett, Ainslie and Braddon, they can go to the park‑and‑ride and jump on a Redex. As long as the government makes it attractive for people to leave their cars there, I believe it will take a lot of heat off Northbourne Avenue, suburban rat runs and parking in the city.

It does not get into the light rail solution, which of course leaves us with the difficulty of segregating the public transport from traffic congestion. There is an emphasis on finding a solution for Northbourne Avenue, and also for Flemington Road, with regard to bus lanes. We are on the record as supporting a tidal bus lane solution for Northbourne Avenue. We believe a one-lane bus lane can fit down Northbourne Avenue, through the trees, without significant damage and without affecting what has been stated publicly by many as one of the best boulevard entrances into a city.

So we would not like to see that disturbed, but we believe that a one-lane bus lane can fit down there. Obviously, bidirectional light rail would fit down there a whole lot better, and that would be a preferable solution. I am happy to elaborate on our concerns about the lack of adoption of the PriceWaterhouse Coopers cost‑benefit analysis later.

Also good for the Gungahlin people from a transport perspective is to fix the bottleneck that occurs every morning at the Phillip Avenue/Majura Avenue intersection, although I am concerned that $1 million for a set of traffic lights running 24/7 for a problem that exists for five hours a week—a very intense five hours—is overkill. I have proposed a solution that could be trialled prior to that million dollars being put down, and I am happy to elaborate on that.

Another good thing in the budget that we have been campaigning for is to address the problems that Harrison School is having. The newest school in Canberra is already turning away students from its priority catchment area, deflecting them to Majura and to Palmerston and the like, and getting demountable buildings. In a brand‑new school, it is disgraceful that a lack of demographic analysis has got us into that situation. So it is good that planning for a P to 2 school for Franklin is going to get started. I suggest it needs a rocket under it to try to correct the overflow problems that we have got with Harrison school already.

I would also suggest that the government seriously looks at co-locating a childcare centre, not nearby but right next door. Anyone who has had kids in both school and childcare would appreciate the need to avoid double drop-offs, and also the need, where you have only got preschool provided for a couple of days a week, to be able to move between a childcare centre and a preschool that are next door to each other, not several blocks away.

We remain concerned and uncertain about what is happening with TAMS service levels, given the workshops that happened last year and all sorts of talk about what we believe are silly little things like reducing the number of times that grass in parks is mowed, toilets are washed and that sort of stuff, instead of getting serious about addressing the very issues that cause the expenditure, which may indeed require capital expenditure. That leads me to an overarching concern: that this government, in various guises, seems averse to debt, whereas in a growing population in a growing area debt is an important part of amortising capital works over a population that is not here yet, I believe, and it is used to good effect in other jurisdictions.

On a personal note, I was very pleased to see the allocation for the wetlands in the Gungahlin town centre. Back in, I think, May 2007 I was standing on top of the hill with Andrew Pearce from the Canberra off-road cycling group and we were contemplating whether it would be a good location for a dirt track for bicycles, to give some activities for our youth. Having formerly managed a major Landcare group, I looked down at the dams and things that were there and I said, “Well, Drew, you know, I used to help farmers build wetlands on their properties, and what we are looking at down there would be an absolutely magnificent wetlands park, a park unlike any other park in any town centre in Canberra. And, because of that school right opposite, Burgmann, and the college which is going to be built up the road, and the scout hall as well, you have got stewards there and the opportunity for those schools to use the park as an environmental “learnscape.” For Hansard, that is not “landscape”; it is learnscape, which is very similar to a model I have seen in Burrumbuttock called Wirraminna. Those schools then could beef up their sciences curriculum with a view, long term, to directing more of our kids towards courses that are serviced very well by our own local universities, so that those kids, instead of working every day and night to pay the rent at a uni somewhere else, can actually stay home and go to a local uni.

THE CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Kerlin. I noticed in the survey that you filled out—and you have covered a number of these issues in your opening statement—that you also spoke about hospital services and that Gungahlin Community Council’s view, if I am reading it correctly, is that the government should really be looking at building another hospital, out at Gungahlin; that there is land you have identified there and that could be sort of master planned in a way that would really meet future needs. Your view, as I read it here, is that the Calvary site is just not going to cope with the future needs, particularly with the population of 100,000 out in Gungahlin. Do you want to elaborate on that a little more?

Mr Kerlin: Sure. One of my predecessors, Ian Ruecroft, accused various people in the government of what he called tiny town syndrome—not having a view towards ultimate populations, and building things for something that is going to happen in the next five years instead of the next 15 or 50 years. I believe there is a little bit of that going on with hospitals at the moment. We are going to have 40,000 or 50,000 more people in Molonglo, which will probably split demand evenly between Calvary and Garran, and we are going to have another 50,000 to 60,000 people in Gungahlin, bringing us from a current 41,000 up to about 100,000 final population at the last estimates that I saw.

With another 100,000 people coming into the central and northern sides, I cannot conceive that those two hospitals could possibly be expanded to be able to cope with that sort of population. They are already suffering considerable stresses with regard to the ad hoc planning and construction that has gone on in the past and you cannot build anything on the sites now without pulling something else down or sacrificing parking and the like.

MR COE: That is not to mention growth in Queanbeyan as well.

Mr Kerlin: Indeed. I am tempted to go into what I would do with the ACT border if I was despot for a day, but I shall not. Braidwood, certainly Bungendore and out to Yass would be on my target—the entire social, political and economic catchment in one jurisdiction would make a lot of sense, I believe, and give us the population we need without population expansion, if you get my drift.

Back to the hospital, there is the added difficulty with Calvary, apart from the vexed problem the government has in trying to purchase it, that we are continuing to pump millions upon millions of dollars of public funds into a hospital that has non-secular beliefs imposed on the services that it delivers.

I do not think I need to go into specifics but I think—and I confirmed this with our meeting last night; they were comfortable with me saying this—that public funds going into a public hospital service for the full range of types of treatments that the public may need in Calvary is not necessarily the case where the operators restrict certain services. That is getting into tricky territory with the church-state separation, I believe.

The obvious solution to us, and it was also canvassed, ‘thought bubbled’, by the Chief Minister in a radio interview recently, is to cut and run with Calvary and look at a third hospital. With that in mind, we just wish to draw the government’s and the Assembly’s attention to the fact that, with the Territory Plan review in 2008, just shy of 40 hectares of land that was earmarked for townhouse expansion right up to the core of the Gungahlin town centre was actually rezoned to CZ2, to business zone, so think: Brindabella Park.

We are jealously guarding that land because that is the future employment base, the thing that will help us reduce the amount of commuting out that we have to do, which in turn is good for all people in Canberra as far as reducing road construction costs and the like. But we do believe that a significant portion of that land could be earmarked for a third hospital and master planning could start straight away. We have got $18 million about to be spent on a community health clinic that could very well be the first stage of a third hospital. And, given that it is a greenfield site, there is nothing to pull down, there is nothing to plan around, except for surrounding neighbours.

THE CHAIR: Thank you for that.

MS BRESNAN: Can I just follow up on the community health centre to get your view on this. Those sorts of centres are important in terms of trying to prevent people from going to hospital often and providing these primary healthcare services. The Health Care Consumers Association has talked about the need to have more of those. Do you think that sort of thing is better placed in the community rather than having it in a hospital setting, given that it is trying to achieve a different purpose from what a hospital would?

Mr Kerlin: I take your point. I would say instead that a hospital is better located very close to a town centre. Look at Garran: it has got all these other shops and various services and things erupting around it. Even though Phillip is just down the road, it is just that bit too far. The land we are talking about is literally one block from the town centre, so as a hospital location it would be ideal in that respect. Whether then the community health clinic, which is literally one block away from the land we are talking about, is better that one block away or as part of, say, 20 of the 40 hectares of rezoned land is not that big a deal, I guess. But I think what is a big deal is earmarking the land now. The rest of the land we would also like to get out there on the market—test the market instead of trying to second guess it—for office blocks.

From the hospital perspective, if it is earmarked now, inappropriate decisions will not be made about it that impact it. I said before about jealously guarding the land. This land can go up to eight, maybe 10, storeys high in development, yet we have got the LDA, on behalf of the government, nominating blocks right next to it for one and two‑storey uses like a licensed club, a mosque and this sort of thing, which, from the mosque perspective, if they had talked with us first, there are more appropriate blocks of land. The club: we just plain do not want it. These are under-utilisations of the particular blocks of land that are being proposed to be given to those uses. But not just that; they actually compromise what can go next to them, because you cannot go and put an eight‑storey development next to a one‑storey church.

MR COE: Do you have concern about the design of the health centre compared to the desired specs and also the actual cost of it?

Mr Kerlin: We have not seen too much in the way of design yet—pretty much just sort of ‘blobby plans’.

MR COE: I was actually at the GCC meeting where there was a presentation and I do remember that some people did express some concerns about the cost and just whether it actually would fill the needs of the community.

Mr Kerlin: I think one of the key concerns that was raised at the meeting was the fact that it was not going to be the same sort of facility that has been in the media in the last couple of days as far as the walk-in kind of thing went, but also it would not have a casualty facet to it. That is a pretty big deal for us because, again, we are down at Calvary and we are lined up for hours and hours with everyone else.

MR SESELJA: Alan, you have had a lot to say about the town centre—not just in relation to the potential for a hospital there but also, just for the development of the town centre generally, the need for government offices there. What is your feedback currently from local businesses of the town centre about, particularly, daytime trade? I note that, a little bit further away from the Marketplace and the other main shops there, a couple of businesses have closed in recent times. What is the latest feedback from businesses in the area?

Mr Kerlin: It is way more than a couple; there have literally been dozens close, and some quite significant ones in prime locations—not just around the back blocks but prime locations. Fruitylicious has gone, and that was right on the main street directly opposite Coles. I am hoping that with other tenants like Eagle Boys Pizza moving into the middle of town that will sort of re-energise it a little bit. A lot of the night time trade has been dragged down towards the so-called entertainment precinct where McDonald’s and KFC are, which tends to also undermine the town centre. But there have been a lot of businesses close. There is a big struggle and they desperately need a weekday, daytime trade. When the mosque is built, I think that will help on one day a week, because it will bring a lot of people into the town at a time when everything is pretty quiet, and again that is why the location of it is so critical.

We need jobs there. We were bitterly disappointed when the government allowed the LDA to put its own efficiencies before efficiencies of service to clients by not moving out to Gungahlin, particularly when there is an entire floor of empty offices upstairs in The G building that Immigration moved out of. LDA could have moved in straight away there and, as we have said, with another 60,000 blocks still to be sold out there, that is where the lion’s share of their work is going to be. But it was more important for them to be opposite ACTPLA than to be near their clients, which was quite disappointing.

There are a couple of blocks of land going on the market at the moment behind the Emergency Services precinct, off Gozzard Street, which is an LDA development, and I guess that is the first chance of testing the market, office block wise, but it is a little distant from the town centre so there will be a little bit of reluctance in some quarters. We are urging the government to get on with releasing some of the land right in the town centre. I have a number of people in the development trade talk to me and they say to me that they just will not put anything on the market: “We would like to look at building in Gungahlin, but we can’t get land.”

MR SESELJA: What is your view on the government office project that is going on? Obviously that would probably make it more difficult down the track for government offices to be located in places like Gungahlin, because there would be a centralising of many of the ACT government public servants.

Mr Kerlin: I think it is fairly understandable, in much the same way as it is understandable that a number of Federal Government departments in Canberra want to try to get everyone that they can in one location. We are pragmatic about that sort of thing. It is why we have targeted Defence as a prime candidate for coming out to Gungahlin and we were cock-a-hoop that there are 350 jobs going out our way with a call centre—in Mitchell, admittedly, not the town centre, but hopefully it is a foot in the door—and with so much Defence housing out there, plus the fact that Defence is far too big to ever be in one location.

That is why it is a primary target. It was also why agencies like the LDA were prime targets, because they were not agencies that necessarily had to be all rolled in, like, TAMS and Parks and Roads and all those sorts of things, which are understandably something that the Government would want to be fairly close to.

THE CHAIR: In your opening address you talked about public transport and welcomed park-and-ride, particularly the one at EPIC. I just wanted to see council’s view on how the Redex bus service has gone. It was a trial in this budget. It has been decided to fund it recurrently and to also extend it to Fyshwick. What is your feedback from the Gungahlin community about Redex?

Mr Kerlin: I had Redex on my list; I just did not look down at my list. Yes, we are very pleased to see the Redex extended. It has been very popular. I know a lot of my workmates have mentioned that they are really pleased to see how it has impacted—not just the Redex services and the availability, but also easing the pressure on the other services. So I have had a lot of personal feedback from people that has been positive about Redex.

One of the things with the bus services that we are keen to see now that the roadworks are virtually wrapped up around the airport precinct is the bus service that runs from Gungahlin out to Brindabella Park via Defence. The last service out leaves Gungahlin at seven in the morning, which is a patently absurd schedule, but at the time that we convinced ACTION to implement the new service, the road congestion there made it absolutely untenable for them to try to offer a reliable service outside those early times and very late return runs.

I have written to Tom Elliott just in the last week saying that now is the time to get a more reasonable service on that run as well, particularly in the mornings, and I would hope that, given that the Majura Parkway was not funded, augmenting that service considerably would take some of the heat off the need to upgrade Horse Park Drive and Majura Road, which are both becoming congested. Horse Park Drive in particular is rapidly congested. It is very hard to get out of some of the suburbs along that road in the morning at the moment. Hopefully, some more traffic light intersections, when they go in, will put a bit of a surge and gap in that will allow people to get safer out of there.

THE CHAIR: And to incorporate a regular bus service that does not stop at 7 am from Gungahlin across to the airport.

Mr Kerlin: Yes. Originally, we campaigned for it to just go straight down the Majura Road so it was just an express service for all the Gungahlin suburbs along Horse Park Drive basically and off to the airport. ACTION saw a need to service Russell a bit better and they went that way and that is fine. It appears to be working, although we have not seen any statistics out of ACTION as to what the patronage is like. I would not be surprised if it is not brilliant, given the hours it operates. At more reasonable hours, we would hope to see that patronage go up a lot.

MS BRESNAN: I was just wondering if you have had any feedback on the progress of the master plan for Gungahlin and if—

Mr Kerlin: The town centre planning study?

MS BRESNAN: Yes, and if people are happy, and what input you have had into the process.

Mr Kerlin: It feels like it has fallen in a bit of a hole since Jason Forest, who was the project officer, left. There are alternative staff on there now but we have not had any contact since a workshop basically that Jason ran in November. We were interested to see the $300,000 that was allocated in this budget for a feasibility study for the town centre roads and we are assuming/hoping that that is to investigate the shared zone proposal that we have been promoting for the town centre, which is partway between a mall and an open road.

The obvious local example is Childers Street in the ANU precinct. We believe that creating a high‑friction zone through the town centre during the daytime will make it pedestrian friendly and good for the businesses but still business friendly at night time when the friction is down and there is more casual surveillance.

The key thing is that we need to bounce through-traffic around the town centre. Someone in their wisdom figured they would deliver a whole bunch of traffic right into the town centre to kick-start the shopping centre, I guess, but we now have to undo the damage that has been done and get that through traffic that goes through to Amaroo, Ngunnawal and the like back out of the town centre and try to retrain everyone to go around it instead of through it, which is a whole lot harder to do than just getting the road network right in the first place. But we have to live with these mistakes.

MR COE: Sure. The Clarrie Hermes Drive extension: you have been met with a little bit of opposition by Nicholls residents in particular.

Mr Kerlin: By Nicholls residents?

MR COE: By some Nicholls residents; at this stage it is not a big groundswell. I was just wondering whether the council has a view on the road and whether it actually needs to be constructed and when it should be constructed or about the actual steps of paying for it.

Mr Kerlin: I did notice mention in your newsletter that it was deferred for a couple of years. I queried Tony Gill about that and he tells me that actually they are intending to go to tender, I think midyear, with a view towards commencing work late in the year. I am not sure where that information came from.

MR COE: The budget tells a slightly different story, I think.

Mr Kerlin: It would be interesting to clarify it, but I only know what Tony has told us directly. I was not aware of any intention to delay that road. It is a pretty important road from a couple of perspectives, but I understand where some of the concerns are coming from and they are very similar to the concerns that were raised in Harrison for Well Station Drive. It is important because it is going to be a fully signalised intersection on the Barton Highway, which in turn will reduce a lot of rat running through Nicholls, so people in Nicholls that are concerned about the road going through probably are not the ones that live on the rat runs and are copping the traffic through those various streets at the moment.

It will take a lot of people off those rat runs and take a lot of traffic off the Curran Drive intersection. Not only will it reduce traffic coming out of Curran Drive; it will also introduce a surge and gap at the traffic lights just a little bit further to the west, which will make it a whole lot safer to get in and out of Curran Drive for the cars that do continue to use it. So from a safety perspective it is important.

It is important for the people up around further to the north that are currently getting a lot of Casey traffic that is going to continue to grow rapidly over the next few years. That traffic has a more alternative way to get out of Casey and straight onto a major arterial road, so it is key that that road gets built. What is most unfortunate is that the developers of Casey were allowed to put together a subdivision plan, which to be fair on them was essentially the indicative subdivision plan that ACTPLA developed in their own concept planning, that allowed house blocks to be developed so close up to the edge of the development, giving no room for adequate buffering of this road that was always on the plans.

The situation that we have got, where we are going to have concrete noise barriers built along a brand‑new road where a brand new suburb has gone in and could easily have been shifted further away from the road, is patently absurd. I know we have had a number of ACTPLA and Roads ACT reps in meetings in recent times saying, “We’ve learnt from that mistake and we’re not going to repeat it.” But that is a line I have heard from MLAs and bureaucrats a lot over the last four years.

We had John Hargreaves stand up in one of our meetings and say, “We’ve learnt from the mistakes of Tuggeranong and we are not going to repeat them in Gungahlin” and then a year later Andrew Barr stood up in a meeting down at Weston and said, “We’ve learnt from the mistakes in Gungahlin and we are not going to repeat them in Molonglo.” We have got to start learning from the mistakes eventually, but it is most regrettable that Clarrie Hermes Drive is going to have to have noise barriers—and I sure hope that mistake is learnt from. But the road does need to go through.

THE CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Kerlin, for appearing before the estimates committee this afternoon. A transcript will be sent to you of this afternoon’s hearing. If you have any corrections, please send them back through.

Mr Kerlin: Thank you, everyone, for staying late.

The committee adjourned at 5.34 pm.