Canberra Liberals leader Jeremy Hanson has defended the party's letterbox drop campaign asking residents to meet at the shops at Narrabundah to talk about hoons, long grass, unsafe footpaths. He also said the American rapper Coolio was not an authority on Canberra's urban issues.
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Mr Hanson and Guilia Jones MLA, along with staffers, set up outside the Narrabundah shops on Friday at 10am. By 11am, four people had come by.
"We haven’t come up with that ourselves. We’ve done this 25 times; we know what the issues are," Mr Hanson said when asked why long grass and hoons had been singled out in the flyer.
"A lot of people say they have real problems with footpaths; real problems with hoons around here. And that’s the expression that’s used to us and resonates, I think," he added.
He said he was not on a crusade against hoons but they came in different forms, including young public servants who used the back streets as rat runs.
Local resident Rosemary Godfrey, 80, who wanted to ask about the future of the defunct mobile library service, said hoons were not particularly an issue anymore. She joked that she had considered going up the hill near her home, with a broom, to tell young people who gathered there to pick up their beer bottles after themselves.
Mr Hanson responded to Coolio's assessment, published in The Canberra Times, of the Yarralumbla Brickworks' high-density housing project and the light rail proposal, saying: "I’m not sure Coolio is an actual authority on what’s happening."
He said that while fellow liberal Steve Doszpot MLA had been taking the lead on the issue, the party was in favour of infill development but it wanted to ensure good planning, something he believed "the government has clearly not convinced the residents" of.
"I guess if Coolio and the government seem to be on accord, then maybe he wants to turn Canberra into a gangsters' paradise. Maybe that’s what Coolio and Simon Corbell [Minister for Capital Metro] are working on? A gangsters' paradise," Mr Hanson said.
The letterbox drop and the street meeting is the Canberra Liberal's 25th such campaign since February. Ms Godfrey said she supported the meeting. "How else are people going to meet them [politicians] when you cannot get into that Legislative Assembly building?"
