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.”

Previously, Vanessa says Higgins shopping centre had a Foodworks shop and a combination newsagent and post office, but they closed down after the government sold the land of the former Higgins Primary School to private developers.

“I’d call it bad planning. They seemed to think that the areas would shrink or they’d consolidate, but it backfired on them because now they’re growing all these areas,” she says.

“Belconnen CBD doesn’t have a primary school, or a secondary school… It’s really weird.”

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. 

She was so frustrated with the lack of care being shown to local community areas that she ran as an independent at the 2016 Legislative Assembly election. 

She was not elected, but she says she is happy that a Greens member was. 

“I’m really glad that Labor was reduced from three to two in the area because it’s made Labor more active and I think we really, really need that,” she says.

“I’m not biassed any more, I’m just open minded. Whoever gets the job done, that’s what I want.”

Vanessa says the lack of attention quieter places such as Higgins is receiving is starting to look a lot like favouritism.

“Scullin has the same population, or 100 less than Higgins, and they’ve got five bins, nine months ago we had none,” she says. 

“We’ve only got two, so why does one area have two and another area have five? It’s the lobby group, and they’ve done a great job at Scullin, but it just means other areas will always have only two. Now why is that? It’s favouritism and sucking up to MLAs.

“It’s a bit like having children, you make an effort to spend the same amount at Christmas or birthdays, you don’t give one kid $1000 and one kid $50. It’s just being fair.”

Vanessa says murals, which many surrounding suburbs have, are an important part of breathing new life into the area. 

“There’s money allocated for the ACT to do murals,” she says, “But it’s up to the lobby group.” 

“If you don’t have that assertive, over-60s group with a lot of free time, it doesn’t happen.”

Vanessa says one solution for reducing this imbalance would be to have a simple checklist that the government applies to all communities across Canberra.

“They should walk around and check if they’ve got a bin, a recycling bin, a water fountain, one or two murals.” she says.

“Check that the tree beds have trees. 

“Is the shopping centre’s bus stop looking good? No. The windows are all broken. Does it need repainting? Yes or no? Go and paint it.

“It’s just doing the bare minimum.”