There’s a group of Narrabundah neighbours who must wonder what it will take to get the ACT government to get its finger out and fix a straightforward traffic problem. Not the death of child, they hope. It’s “Seven Days” with IAN MEIKLE. 

THIS is the story of an accident-prone intersection that complaining Narrabundah locals can get fixed in a heartbeat. They’re told (off the record, of course) that someone just has to die to get this moribund government to do anything about it. How shameful.

Why, I wonder, do all problem roads lead to City Services Minister Chris Steel? And there they seem to come to a shuddering halt.

In March last year a group of concerned residents went to see Minister Steel and his senior bureaucrats from Roads ACT about the “black spot” intersection of La Perouse Street and Carnegie Crescent. Not a month goes by without a collision there.

“There was lots of nodding and writing notes, but no action. We followed up with letters. No action. We pulled together a video and sent it to them. No action,” bemoans group member Timothy DeWan.

And so the accidents continued for another year. 

So, what’s the obvious problem Mr Steel and his gnomes can’t see? 

“Large building developments in the inner south are contributing hundreds more cars through this intersection,” says Timothy.

“Speeding vehicles, large trucks and traffic congestion are creating dangerous bottlenecks in the morning and the afternoon.

“Most worryingly, our young children from surrounding schools including Red Hill Primary [plus Canberra Grammar and Telopea Park] as well as local, elderly senior citizens are forced to attempt to navigate across this dangerous intersection every day, weaving through the traffic in the morning and afternoon to get to their destinations. 

“This intersection was built in the early ’60s for a much smaller Canberra community. It is now unfit for purpose.” 

Yet, despite smash after smash, the ACT government does nothing except promise to consider the matter, some time or other. We know this because Minister Steel, responding to a Question on Notice in the Legislative Assembly, offered a desultory four-line response to that effect. 

The residents want the traffic congestion reduced, speed at the four approaches to the intersection reduced and improved capacity for pedestrians to safely cross the intersection. Not rocket science.

This year, as the collisions keep clocking up, the residents initiated a petition to the ACT Legislative Assembly. It attracted more than 650 signatures and, despite being tabled, the minister still has three months more before he needs to even respond to it. Jesus would weep.

Next step, a professionally produced YouTube video that chillingly illustrates the traffic problem and the thundering trucks rolling through the suburb. There’s even a grab from the lollipop man in which he says motorists don’t take any notice of him (it’s here).

“We are all just neighbours in our community who have come together to address this awful situation,” says Timothy. “We want the crashes to stop. We don’t want anyone to die. We thought this was the role of government.” You’d think so, Chris Steel. 

“I DON’T usually talk about politics,” says a disingenuous though personally addressed letter from the 27th prime minister of Australia,”but there is someone I want to talk to you about today.”

If I tell you it was from Julia Gillard, you’ll know it was about the virtues of re-electing comrade Katy Gallagher, who was bringing out Julia to keep the senatorial aspirations of David Pocock a problem for Zed Seselja and not her. 

It worked and it didn’t. It did, in that Gallagher survived a nearly six per cent swing against her but still had enough votes to pocket a full quota. And it didn’t, in that the letter arrived at its recipient’s Curtin letterbox on May 23, two days after the election.

And while Katy was able to get the electorate to endorse her continuing full employment, her long-time partner Dave Skinner has no such problems. As senior director of the Legislative Assembly’s Office of the Clerk, he recently picked up a certificate from Speaker Joy Burch in acknowledgment of his service and commitment. He’s been there 25 years.

ONE-hundred-and-ten years to the date of this week’s “CityNews” publication, a prophetic word from one Walter Burley Griffin, who on June 2, 1912 said: “I have planned a city not like any other city in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any governmental authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city, a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future.” But not to the ideals of the Barr progressives pulling the place apart. 

Ian Meikle is the editor of “CityNews” and can be heard on the “CityNews Sunday Roast” news and interview program, 2CC, 9am-noon. There are more of his columns on citynews.com.au