Interview with Leon Delaney, Canberra Live on 2CC

LEON DELANEY: You can now have your say on improving King's Park. The Stage 3 plan for the improvements is now open for public consultation. To explain more, the Member for Eden-Monaro and Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories, Kristy McBain. Good afternoon.

KRISTY MCBAIN: Good afternoon, Leon. How you going?

DELANEY: Not too bad. It's turning out to be a busy day for you. You've just had to extract yourself from the Parliament, I believe.

MCBAIN: A Division taking place, so I had to run down there and run back up here to make sure I got on 2CC.

DELANEY: Fantastic. All right, Kings Park, what's happening there?

MCBAIN: It's part of the overall plan to improve the usage around the lake. We want to see more people utilising that fantastic space for events. We want to see more commercial opportunities there and we want to make sure that the interaction between walkers, runners, bicycle riders, people pushing their prams is also taken care of. Making sure that we've got some dedicated bike lanes as well.

DELANEY: That's been one of the problems there, hasn't it? With a lack of separation between pedestrians and cyclists. So, how will that be addressed?

MCBAIN: We're looking at how we can improve public safety by separating pedestrians and cyclists. We've got some plans up on the website, and there'll be a range of pop-up, have your say stations, as well as on the NCA website. We want people to comment, to give us their views, because we want to make sure that the park is accessible and user friendly as possible. We want to activate the space, it's such a great space for Canberra and we want to make sure that more people get to use it.

DELANEY: If I may quote the Canberra Times, “At the moment, it's an untidy swathe of space, some of it heavily populated by rabbits.” Okay. You're going to have to clear out the current tenants, aren't you?

MCBAIN: A lot of rabbits. We can't build the Great Wall of China there to get rid of some of the rabbits, as a great advertising campaign once spoke about. Absolutely, we need to address that. We need to make sure that we've got some more parking available, which is what we're going to do. A better connection off Kings Avenue for pedestrians coming from the bridge. We want to make sure that we can consider some of those safety issues. We've got some plans in place, but we would absolutely love community feedback because it's your park, you use it. We want to make sure it continues to be heavily used.

DELANEY: Yeah. And lots of landscaping and also a new lookout, which will then form the end point of the R G Menzies walk. And at that lookout point, you'll be able to embrace the views across the lake to the Carillon, I believe.

MCBAIN: That's right. We know the Carillon is obviously one of the landmarks across Canberra and lots of people use that as a meeting point. We want to make sure that it's also able to be viewed from a range of different spots. It's really important that Stage 3 of the King's Park rejuvenation goes ahead, so, really keen to get your feedback.

DELANEY: Okay, so there's a couple of things for people to engage here. First of all, they can simply go to the website and provide their feedback there. But you've got some public times when people can actually come to information sessions, I believe.

MCBAIN: That's right. If you jump on the nca.gov.au website, there is a tab there called Public Consultations. It'll tell you all of the dates and times we're doing public consultation pop ups across the place. We really urge you to jump on and let us know what you think about the preliminary plans and then we can, obviously, once consultation is finished, move to a detailed design and costing.

DELANEY: And get on with the job. Meanwhile, the Australian Local Government Association has called for $1 billion in additional federal funding to fix Australia's regional roads. Now, it's been 13 months since my trip from Brisbane to Bathurst. Has the roadway been improved since then?

MCBAIN: The Grattan Institute report doesn't say anything that we don't already know. We know that our roads are in poor condition, especially considering the number of natural disaster events we've seen across the country. It's one of the reasons that we put in place an additional $250 million into the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Fund, which specifically went to outer metro regional rural councils to deal with their road concerns. I've met with close to 250 councils across the country now and each one of them has spoken to me about the costs for councils going up and the need for them to deliver on some of those roads’ projects. This was in response to the concerns that they were raising. We absolutely acknowledge that we have to work in conjunction with state and territory jurisdictions. To that end, I want to congratulate the NSW Government on their recently announced additional funding to regional and rural councils for roads maintenance. Across many parts of the country they will be receiving seven-figure sums to help them deal with big road issues.

DELANEY: There was quite a lot of rain last year which caused most of this damage. And continuing my trip from Bathurst on back to Canberra, there was still plenty of evidence of the smaller regional roads there also being very badly affected. And I saw a number of stories about other regional roads, the not-so-major roads, but around this region and in your seat, that were very badly damaged and local councils like Queanbeyan-Palerang, for example, just didn't have the financial resources to get on top of that. This is an ongoing problem, isn't it?

MCBAIN: The freezing of indexation on Financial Assistance Grants, which was done in the 2014 budget by the previous government, the Abbott Government, has created a shortfall in funding. We're working with councils on how we address that. The NSW Government acknowledges that this problem exists too and they've just delivered, in Queanbeyan-Palerang's case, nearly an additional $3.5 million for roads across that council area. It's about us working together and so often the levels of government are pitted against each other. It's about us making sure that we're working with councils on their priority projects. That's why we've got things like the Bridges Renewal Program and the Black Spot Program and the Roads to Recovery Program, so that we can help councils deliver on their local priorities instead of going into competitive grant funds where you've got governments through a series of criteria picking the priorities for councils.

DELANEY: Yeah. Generally speaking, most of these roads are the responsibility of either local government or state government or some combination of the two. But given much of the damage over the last, say, 18 months or so, is the result of what might be described as widespread natural disasters, does that mean that the Commonwealth should bear more responsibility in helping out?

MCBAIN: We already provide assistance during natural disasters to local council areas. My colleague, Senator Murray Watt, has already advanced $1.8 billion to jurisdictions across the country in advance of any natural disasters that will happen over the summer period, so that we can get money onto the ground where communities need it most following a disaster happening. We also, as a government, took away some of those guidelines which said you had to build back what was there during a natural disaster. We know that we shouldn't be replacing infrastructure with, like-infrastructure that was inundated in a flood or burnt during a fire. We want to make sure that councils are building resilient infrastructure for their communities and we've absolutely working with them on building back better instead of replacing what was there.

DELANEY: Yeah, well, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I mean after Cyclone Tracy in Darwin they changed all the regulations for the wind resistance of the houses. You'd do the same thing with bridges that were washed away or roads that were inundated. You'd improve the standards, wouldn't you?

MCBAIN: That's exactly what we're doing. It hasn't always been the case though, Leon. It's really important that we continue to listen to local voices, especially after a natural disaster. Locals know their communities best and they want to provide the best for those communities. Great to be working with the local government sector and helping them implement the priorities for their communities through some of the funds I've outlined.

DELANEY: Indeed. Kristy, thanks very much for your time today.

MCBAIN: Great to be with you, Leon.

LEON DELANEY: Thank you. Kristy McBain, the local Member for Eden-Monaro, also Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories.