Three thousand extra people in under the ACT Government’s draft plan for North Watson would place unacceptable demands on existing shops, roads and schools in existing suburbs, according to a community group.
The Watson Community Association said yesterday that the plan provided for no new schools or shops in the new area, so those people would come to Watson creating awful traffic congestion.
The draft plan was made public last week.
Association spokesperson, Julie Smith, said traffic engineering, like humps and roundabouts, could only slow the traffic, not reduce it.
She said the Government’s promotion of urban-infill in Canberra perpetuated a myth that North Canberra was decaying and needed livening up.
“”The community resents that,” she said.
Watson Primary had 450 students. Its enrolment had increased last year. Extra students from the new area would push it to an intolerable 700.
There was a myth that the population of North Canberra could be increased to its 1960s level without any improvements in facilities like shops and roads. The adult population was still the same, only the number of children had decreased and car use had gone up 25 per cent.
She said that the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, had said North Watson would not go ahead without broad community support. That had not been demonstrated. The community had been ignored. The Government was pushing ahead with the same number of houses.
If North Watson went through, the Government would have spent $55 million, much of it on a new sewer. It would then be committed to its in-fill program to put 5000 dwellings through the whole of North Canberra whatever the community thought later. It would then get pressure in the future to build Monash Drive along the foothills of Mount Ainslie, no matter what its position was now.
The association resented the statement by the Minister for Environment Land, Bill Wood, that it supported in-fill as long as it was not in Watson. The association had condemned the Government’s 50-50 infill-greenfields program as inappropriate for Canberra. It had spoken to other North Canberra groups saying it did not want to pass the problem elsewhere but to jointly opposed the program.
Ms Smith said that if North Watson went ahead it would delay some Gungahlin development which would result in delays in building up the population density there to warrant development of facilities like shops, schools, transport and health centres.
She said that the plan spoke of a new tourist gateway to Canberra along the Federal Highway as a selling point, but in fact it would not add anything to what had already been proposed there.
North Watson would double the size of the existing suburb without adding any community facilities.