CIC Australia and the NSW Government have agreed to set aside land for two government schools and a fire station at the new township of Googong.
The NSW Government’s Googong state planning agreement was executed in mid-September, ensuring the township allocation of land for major pieces of community infrastructure including two state schools — one primary and one combined primary and high school only eight kilometres south-east of Queanbeyan and four kilmetres south east of Jerrabomberra.
“These new education facilities will provide a much-needed boost to the schooling system in the Queanbeyan Local Government Area,” Queanbeyan mayor Tim Overall said.
“Their development, along with the proposed education facilities at Tralee, will provide Queanbeyan residents with a much broader range of education choices.”
The Googong development is in the final stages of the approval process. Council is currently awaiting the NSW Government’s assessment of a Part 3A application for the integrated water cycle system which will then allow the joint regional planning panel to assess the first development application for 336 lots.
Subject to these approvals, the first lots at Googong are expected to be available the end of this year.
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![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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