While the Federal Budget has drawn a lot of our attention over this past week, there’s also been plenty going on in the Assembly. 

This week’s been particularly busy with committee hearings. As a member of the Economics, Industry and Recreation Committee, I’ve been participating in an inquiry into Canberra’s night-time economy, during which the Night-Time Economy Minister expressed an openness to the idea of establishing a dedicated Night-Time Coordinator within government, which is something I’ve been pushing for over the last 12 months. 

I spent Thursday chairing an important inquiry into endometriosis and other pelvic pain conditions as Chair of the Social Policy Committee. It was heartbreaking hearing the stories of women who are suffering from this, often going many many years without being diagnosed or treated appropriately. This inquiry is an important step in identifying how we can better support people with these conditions, and was brought about by committee member and Labor MLA Caitlin Tough, who has endo and is an Ambassador for Endometriosis Australia. 

Another highlight of the past few weeks was presiding over a citizenship ceremony at the Hyatt Hotel. It was a privilege meeting Dr Nilofar Ebrahimi (pictured below), who was the MC for the ceremony and won the 2025 ACT Multicultural Excellence Award for Diversity and Inclusion. Dr Ebrahimi served for 12 years as a Member of Parliament in Afghanistan, up until the Taliban took control in 2021. After hosting the ceremony that I attended as the Presiding Officer, Dr Ebrahimi then went to her own citizenship ceremony – becoming an Australian citizen immediately after having hosted an Australian citizenship ceremony! How good’s that?

• NDIS Community Forum
• Inner North Bike Bus
• Julie Bishop Resigns as ANU Chancellor
• Strata Inquiry
• CIT CEO Recruitment Inquiry
• Supporting Electrified Transport 
• First Nations Incarceration vs ACCO Funding
• Garden City Cycleway
• Goodies Junction Visit
• Community Sport
• Gambling Ads
• Youth Homelessness Strategy
• Shane Rattenbury’s Valedictory
• Voices of Belconnen and Gungahlin
• Upcoming Mobile Offices and Phone Me Friday

NDIS Community Forum

On Wednesday evening, I’m co-hosting a community forum on the NDIS changes alongside Senator David Pocock and Fiona Carrick MLA. I want to thank the Pocock Office for putting this together.

The forum is an opportunity for people with disability, carers, families, advocates and service providers to share their perspectives, ask questions, and raise concerns about the upcoming changes.

This is a time of significant uncertainty and concern for Canberra’s disability community, and we’re keen to hear from you and take your voices into the Assembly and the Senate.

You can find more details and RSVP here. It will also be streamed on Senator Pocock’s YouTube channel here. You can submit questions ahead of the event here. 

Inner North Bike Bus

I really enjoyed riding alongside Canberra By Bike Founder Paris Lord a few weeks ago to launch his new inner north bike bus, which goes all the way from O’Connor to Deakin on Tuesday mornings. 

I’m keen to see more initiatives like this supported by the ACT Government, which is why I included bike buses and school walking buses in my submission for the ACT’s next Climate Change Strategy - you can read more about that here.

Further information on the bike bus can be found on Canberra By Bike’s website here. There’s also a great write-up on the initiative in Region here.

Julie Bishop Resigns as ANU Chancellor 

Last Tuesday, I was invited to stand with Senator David Pocock, Alicia Payne MP, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), the ANU Students’ Association (ANUSA), Dr Liz Allen, Professor Ian Chubb and ANU staff in solidarity with Professor Rebekah Brown amid speculation Chancellor Julie Bishop was moving to oust her as Interim Vice-Chancellor – against the wishes of the ANU community. 

Last Friday, Julie Bishop acted in the best interests of the University and resigned as Chancellor instead. 

ANU is part of Canberra's DNA and what happens there has a huge impact on our community.

I want to say thank you to everyone who's been fighting hard for this historic institution. After a traumatic period for my old uni, it’s time for a new chapter where what’s best for students and staff comes first. 

Strata Inquiry

The Assembly’s Legal Affairs Committee finally handed their mammoth report into the management of strata properties a couple of weeks ago. 

A key recommendation from this inquiry is establishing a Strata Commissioner, which is a commitment I secured in my supply agreement with the Chief Minister. 

Many apartment dwellers and others living under unit title in the ACT will be eager to see the establishment of a Strata Commissioner who’s able to help resolve disputes without the hassle, costs and stress of escalating an issue to ACAT.

The committee also made a range of other recommendations, which you can read in their report here.

I know issues with strata management affect a lot of people in our community, and I’m keen to engage with the Government to ensure their work on this is carried forward in a timely manner. I've called for them to start by providing sufficient funding to ensure the new Strata Commissioner can do their job properly, and I’ve got a meeting lined up with the Minister to discuss this further soon.

CIT CEO Recruitment Inquiry

The CIT CEO recruitment saga continues, with the matter now being referred to a newly established privileges committee. The select committee will examine whether the current CEO of CIT, Dr Margot McNeill, gave false or misleading evidence during the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Administration's inquiry into the recruitment process that led to her appointment as CEO, and whether Dr McNeill is in contempt of the Assembly.

I spoke in support of the motion establishing the committee, where I reiterated my calls for Dr McNeill to be dismissed on the basis of the Public Accounts and Administration Committee’s finding that she “actively misled the CIT Board by denying that there was a finding of misconduct that had been made against her.”

You can learn more on why I voted to support the establishment of this committee through my voting record here, and in a detailed ABC article here.

I’m continuing to push for governance reform at CIT, which has operated at arm’s length from government since the establishment of an independent board in 2015. The lack of ministerial oversight and parliamentary scrutiny brought about this arrangement has been disastrous.

The former CEO, Leanne Cover, was found to have engaged in corrupt conduct by mismanaging millions of dollars worth of contracts – and misleading both the board and the Minister about them. Her replacement as CEO, Dr McNeill, has been found to have engaged in misconduct in her previous role at TAFE NSW – and to have misled the board about those misconduct findings. I think it’s time to do away with the independent board arrangement entirely. Clearly it’s not working, and I've been engaging across the Assembly about changing this.

Supporting Electrified Transport

I was pleased to see the Assembly support a motion from the Greens last week calling on the Government to extend the Sustainable Household Scheme to include e-cargo bikes. 

The motion also called for a trial of low-cost pop-up cycle lanes along major transport routes and connector roads, for further government assistance for the adoption of e-bikes and e-scooters, and for expanded electric vehicle incentives and charging infrastructure. You can read more about it in my voting record here.

Along with Electrify Canberra and other local advocates, I’ve been pushing to get e-bikes included in the Sustainable Household Scheme, and was a bit disappointed that only e-cargo bikes were proposed for inclusion. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the Government over the line on including all e-bikes, and still can’t really understand why not. I’ve also been calling for pop-up cycle lanes on roads like Northbourne Avenue during the fuel crisis, and wasn’t able to get this up in the Assembly in late March so was glad to see the Greens revisit it last week.

First Nations Incarceration vs ACCO Funding

Through a question I asked in the Assembly combined with Productivity Commission data, we learned that the ACT Government is spending more than twice as much on incarcerating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than on Aboriginal-led services. 

The Government spent an estimated $36.2 million on detaining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Alexander Maconochie Centre and the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre in 2024-25, compared to just $15.4 million on delivering services through Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations (ACCOs). 

I’ve written to the Chief Minister about these appalling figures and the need to rectify them in the upcoming Territory budget as part of a broader call for greater investment in prevention and early intervention.

We don’t invest enough in breaking cycles of poverty and disadvantage, and we pay the price with an expensive justice system, high reoffending rates and shameful First Nations incarceration rates. This is indicative of the mistake we continue to make in failing to invest sufficiently upstream so as to reduce both the human costs and the financial costs borne downstream.

We don’t invest enough in social connection, and we pay the price with an expensive mental health system.

We don't invest enough in things like community sport and active travel, and we pay the price with an expensive hospital system.

On average, it costs almost $600 per day to incarcerate someone in Canberra’s prison, and more than $4,000 per day to detain a young person at Bimberi. Imagine the level of wraparound ACCO-led support that could be provided with that kind of money!

You can learn more, and see what local First Nations leaders Joe Hedger and Julie Tongs OAM had to say about it, in the National Indigenous Times here.

Garden City Cycleway

In early April, the Government put out a media release saying that work had commenced on Stage 1D of the Garden City Cycleway (note an asterisk has now been added – read on to learn why). 

I use this route to get to work multiple times per week, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for any sign of construction commencing but haven’t seen anything yet.

So, during Question Time last week, I asked the Minister for City and Government Services, Tara Cheyne, what was going on and when construction would actually commence. 

Minister Cheyne explained that the media communications were approved and scheduled for publication before Easter, but “there were then some delays to construction commencing because of the impacts of fuel prices and there needed to be some further engagement with the contractor. Ultimately, that information was still published while that further engagement was under way, so ultimately it was not correct.” She apologised and was pretty upfront in her response, which I appreciated, but I do hope to see some process changes to prevent these mistakes from happening again. 

It’s damaging to public trust when government announcements don’t reflect what’s actually happening on the ground.

My office spoke with the Minister’s office later on and they indicated the project is now expected to commence this month.

You can read more in this Canberra Times article here.

Goodies Junction Visit

I was impressed by the team at Goodies Junction, who gave me a walk through of their operations out at the Mugga Lane Resource Management a few weeks ago. 

It was fascinating seeing their end-to-end process, from the sorting and recovery of donated goods all the way to their sale or, in some cases, donation to people in need. 

They’ve been through a challenging period given the understandable uproar when the previous operator’s contract wasn’t extended by the Government – back when it used to be the Green Shed – but they’re doing great work keeping items out of landfill and giving them a second purpose. 

Community Sport

I’ve been pushing for a 10-year plan for community sporting infrastructure across the ACT and for a dive pool to be included in the new Canberra Aquatic Centre slated for Commonwealth park. The Assembly’s Economics, Industry and Recreation Committee has now made recommendations supporting both. 

After initially ruling out a dive pool in Commonwealth Park earlier this year, it’s been great to see the ACT Government change its tune on this following my advocacy alongside aquatic sporting organisations, Senator David Pocock and the hundreds of Canberrans who signed the petition I sponsored about this. 

Meanwhile, the Sports and Recreation Minister, Yvette Berry, has been resisting calls for a 10-year community sport infrastructure plan on the basis that it would set expectations that might not be met. Pretty poor excuse in my opinion.

Such a plan would allow sporting organisations to align themselves with an agreed timeline of government investment and not have to waste their time applying for funding in every annual budget and grant round. It’s something that’s got a huge amount of political and community support, so hopefully we see some movement when the Government responds to the committee’s recommendation.

We also need to see a serious ongoing uplift in funding for community sporting facilities. We know how beneficial community sport is for health, wellbeing and social connection, but too many sports have waitlists due to a lack of facilities, and each week we’ve been seeing sporting fixtures get postponed, cancelled or relocated because grounds aren’t up to scratch.

In better news, you might remember that last year I stood with the Eastlake Football Club, the Eastlake Cricket Club, AFL NSW/ACT and Cricket ACT in calling for the ACT Government to get behind their masterplan for Kingston Oval. They've since been awarded $615,000 from the Government's 2026 Community Sport Facility Program, which is great news and a very welcome first step. I'm still keen to see a longer-term partnership put together to deliver on the full vision laid out in the masterplan, and I understand Eastlake has been engaging with the Government on next steps.

Gambling Ads

During the last sitting week, I spoke in response to the ACT Minister for Gaming Reform, Marisa Paterson, spruiking the Federal Government’s recently announced gambling advertising reforms. 

Three years ago, a multipartisan federal parliamentary committee chaired by the highly regarded late Labor MP Peta Murphy handed down a report on online gambling harm and the need for reform. The Murphy Report recommended that a full gambling advertising ban be phased in over a three-year period. Yet it took three years of the Federal Government doing nothing on this only to get a commitment to a partial ban. The Murphy Report was adamant that partial bans do not work, and the fact that our kids will now see three gambling ads every hour on TV is not something to celebrate.

It’s clear that, for too long, governments have been fundamentally conflicted with vested interests and close ties to the gambling industry keeping them from driving meaningful change on behalf of the people they’re supposed to represent.

While the industry continues to have a chokehold on the decision-making of elected officials, we’ll continue to see disappointing non-announcements like this one. This is something I’m keen to pursue at the Territory level, and I’ll have more to say about that soon.

You can watch my speech in the Chamber here.

Youth Homelessness Strategy

In some positive news, the ACT Government has committed to developing a strategy to tackle youth homelessness. 

Greens MLA Laura Nuttall introduced a motion to the Assembly calling for a dedicated youth homelessness strategy co-designed with the sector and people with lived experience, which is something I was very happy to support having taken this issue to the election in 2024. It was great to see the motion pass the Assembly with unanimous support.

I focused my remarks both on the need for the strategy, and the need for it to actually be funded and implemented. We’ve seen commitments in several existing ACT Government plans and strategies remain unfunded and undelivered, even after those plans and strategies have expired. Unfortunately just because something is part of a government strategy in the ACT does not mean it will actually happen, so this is something I’m keen to keep a close eye on.

Shane Rattenbury’s Valedictory 

Last week marked the final sitting week for ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury, and yesterday was his last day in the Assembly.

Shane and I have been able to work together on a range of issues in Kurrajong over the last 18 months, including pushing the Government to support our most disadvantaged community out in Oaks Estate, collaborating to get behind community advocacy on protecting the Ainslie Volcanics Grasslands, and more.

It was moving to hear Shane’s valedictory speech as well as several other contributions from MLAs across the political spectrum. 

Politics works best when parliamentarians work constructively across party lines to achieve real outcomes for the people they’re elected to represent, and that’s been my experience of working with Shane.

I wish him all the best for what’s next and want to thank him for his service and contribution to the ACT Legislative Assembly and our community over the last 17 years. 

Voices of Belconnen and Gungahlin

Voices of Belconnen and Gungahlin want to hear what locals are looking for in potential candidates for the seats of Ginninderra and Yerrabi in the 2028 ACT election, and for the seat of Fenner in the next federal election. They’re running a survey to get a sense of community support for independent representation in that region, which you can complete on their new website here - where you can also sign up to volunteer and make donations. Spread the word with anyone based in Belconnen and Gungahlin!

Upcoming Mobile Offices & Phone Me Friday

My next mobile office is in Garema Place on Friday 22 May from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, and I’ll be at Dickson Shops on Wednesday 3 June from 9am to 10am. Then my next Phone Me Friday is on Friday 5 June from 11:30am to 12:30pm. You can find all my upcoming events and RSVP here. 

As always, please reach out any time on [email protected] or call on (02) 6205 1475 during office hours.

Thank you for your support,

Tom