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"It's difficult to justify the ACT's excess taxation when debt's rising, the hospital system is the country's poorest and services for disadvantaged groups are the nation's worst," write JON STANHOPE & KHALID AHMED.
Vanessa Jones loves living in Higgins, but tells reporter KATARINA LLOYD JONES she's “fed up” with the ACT government; the local shops have been abandoned, preventing residents from having a community-centred space to socialise.
"A good wedge gets voters off the fence. Voters become very much engaged and very much angry. Time to take that anger out at the ballot box," writes political columnist ANDREW HUGHES.
![Teacher Vanessa Jones has been living in Higgins since 2001, and while she loves the area, she says she is “fed up” with the neglectful ACT government.
The Higgins shops have been completely abandoned, says Vanessa, preventing the opportunity for residents to have a community-centred space to socialise.
They only received bins nine months ago, she says, and requests for a water station and repairs to the bus station have gone unanswered.
“It’s very, very slow,” says Vanessa.
“I asked for the zebra crossing on Fullagar [Crescent] to be repainted, and we had to wait about six or nine months.
“That’s just such a long time… we pay a lot of rates.”
Vanessa says assistance from the government only seems to go to communities with time-rich and assertive communities, leaving places such as Higgins, where the majority of households have both adults working full-time and English may not be the first language of the family, at an automatic disadvantage.
“If you’ve got two people working, paying a mortgage, raising two or three kids, they don’t have the time,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa says the lack of attention quieter places such as Higgins is receiving is starting to look a lot like favouritism.
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