John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Sunday I had the pleasure to attend the official opening of Australia’s first all abilities playground, Livvi’s Place, at Timbrell Park, Five Dock, in my electorate of Lowe. The Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, the Hon Anthony Albanese, also attended to officially open the playground. The opening was hosted by the City of Canada Bay Council.

Designed by Ben Richards, council’s landscape architect, in consultation with leading academics, play, disability, and landscape experts and the local community, Livvi’s Place Timbrell Parkaims to dramatically reduce the barriers experienced by children with special needs and their families, helping to give them a level playing field for life. The playground’s unique design and equipment addresses the needs of children with various forms of disability including mobility, vision and hearing impairment as well as spectrum disorders such as autism.

The City of Canada Bay has worked closely with the community and founding partners, Touched by Olivia and Leighton Contractors, to bring Livvi’s Place to fruition. In 2008 council adopted the Let’s Play strategy. A key aim of Let’s Play is ensuring that local children and families have access to well planned playgrounds that are within reach of everyone in this community. Livvi’s Place at Timbrell Park is an important and impressive benchmark in this approach.

This is a wonderful initiative. I know it will be of immense value to our community and I thank all of those involved for their vision and contribution. The City of Canada Bay Council is well known for its vision and leadership. As a strong supporter of action on climate change, I think it is worth noting that the initiatives that the council has introduced have also been recognised and awarded at state, national and international level. In fact, they have won so many awards in recent times that I cannot mention them all tonight for lack of time—but I will mention some.

At a state level they won the Local Government and Shires Association Excellence in Environment award for various projects including waste management, stormwater and urban waterways and local sustainability. They also won an award for council’s water saving action plan, the energy saving action plan, council sustainability awards, green business events and a food recycling and processing trial.

At a national level, I am proud to record that Canada Bay was the overall winner of the Keep Australia Beautiful award, which involved various council projects, including the council’s Sustainable City Program and FuturesPlan20—the council’s 20-year sustainable vision for the city that has been developed to ensure our city and its people can respond in a positive and constructive way to the challenges ahead. Other national Keep Australia Beautiful Sustainable Cities Awards in 2009 included: the Water Conservation Award for the City of Canada Bay’s water savings action plan; the Energy Innovation Award for various council projects, including park solar lighting, sports field lighting management system and energy reduction measures within Concord Library; and the Dame Phyllis Frost Litter Prevention Award for various council projects, including the council’s ‘kNOw waste’ education program for local schools, multiunit dwelling—MUD—waste management guides, and the food recycling and processing trial.

At an international level, Canada Bay has won a gold medal award for Liveable Communities 2009 and various projects involving the enhancement of the landscape, heritage management, environmentally sensitive practices, community sustainability, healthy lifestyles and planning for the future. It also won an international award for environmentally sensitive practices involving the council’s Sustainable City Program, FuturesPlan20 targets, the water savings action plan, waste management and the ‘green’ designed Concord Library.

It is wonderful to see a local government area like Canada Bay working together with the state and federal governments to provide the community with a strong vision for the future and providing important facilities to the residents and ratepayers of the City of Canada Bay. The City of Canada Bay Council has also taken action to address what the overwhelming scientific community recognises as one of the biggest challenges for the future: climate change. Canada Bay takes up a large proportion of my electorate of Lowe. It is home to 140 parks and reserves and many kilometres of accessible public foreshore. Constituents of Canada Bay value the green and open spaces and are committed to partner their council in delivering projects and programs that strive for world’s best practice. I congratulate Mayor Angelo Tsirekas, councillors, general manager Gary Sawyer, staff and of course the community for delivering such a fantastic end result that will benefit so many of my constituents and the broader community for many years to come. Well done, Canada Bay—a most progressive council.