The ACT should be expanded

It is becoming increasingly clear that the ACT is barely sustainable as a financial proposition.

Our city is getting quite run down - not just in the parliamentary triangle where the budget cuts by the current ALP and previous Liberal federal governments have resulted in a distinctly run-down appearance that has been sneaking up on us for several years.

But this problem is across the whole city and Territory. TaMS is looking at budget cuts to basic responsibilities like park maintenance, roads are being resurfaced with crummy chipseal that the bureaucrats acknowledge won't last the full maintenance cycle, potholes repairs can't be kept up with, and all this in a drought - how would they cope if it actually started raining again?

And in new development, the ACT Government is squeezing us into ever shrinking blocks because they are running out of land they can sell into the future. And that's a problem because the ACT budgets just wouldn't stack up if there wasn't more land to sell - more silver in the cupboard so to speak.

The problem is that the ACT is not big enough. Well it is big enough geographically, but for some unfathomable reason, Canberra is right at the northern edge of it.

ACT is at the heart of a wider social, geographic and economic region. As a result the ACT provides the key assets that contribute to the lives of all the people in this much wider region - the hospitals, museums, galleries, roads, water supply, schools, sports, events, and so much more. ACT taxpayers are subsidising NSW residents. And this makes life for Canberra residents so much more expensive.

The solution is obvious, but unfortunately will be dismissed out of hand by most people. The ACT borders need to be expanded out to Bungendore in the east, and north to Murrumbateman, or preferably to Yass to secure a connection with the nation's Number 1 highway.

This would see the entire social and economic catchment of the region all within the one government area and therefore within the one revenue base.

Regional planning - a joke under four local governments - would happen by default.

All the people using ACT schools, hospitals, roads and other facilities would also be contributing to their costs.

And the pressure would be off the ACT to encourage endless unsustainable population growth and unreasonably increasing density where the space really isn't a limiting factor - only the current ACT border is.

There's a lot of criticism of 'urban sprawl', but an efficient quick public transport system would negate most of those concerns, giving people back the chance to retain a back yard for food and play.