Good morning Canberra!
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Well, this run of frost probably won't let up today. If you've parked the car outside, you'll be scraping ice off the windscreen this morning as the weather bureau predicts a low of minus 1 degree and a top of 14 today, along with a 40 per cent chance of rain in the evening but sun throughout the day. So a bit of everything, really.
Here's what's leading the news this morning.
'I just want my daughter back': NAIDOC week brings families to prison
Trudy Murray was 22 years old and pregnant with her daughter Alexis Rose when she first was carted off to prison.
Cradling her daughter and speaking of her drive to turn her life around, she stood on Monday as a stark illustration of this year’s NAIDOC theme, “Because of her, we can”.
“I didn’t really have much of a plan before I came in. Now I just want to get my daughter back,” Trudy said.
She was visited by her family as part of an Alexander Maconochie Centre celebration for NAIDOC Week, as hundreds of people packed into the prison’s indoor basketball court to kick off the family day event.
Steven Trask with this story about the centre's NAIDOC event.
ACT opposition leader would release more land for homes, if elected
We know that the ACT government's land sales profits have risen four-fold in just four years. Now Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe says he would release more land for free-standing homes than the current government.
He says he'd make the reform if the opposition wins government at the next poll, but has not outlined how much land he believes needs to be released, or at what price.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Chief Minister Andrew Barr has rejected the suggestion by former Treasury official Dr Khalid Ahmed that the government may have held back releasing land to increase its dividends in later years.
ACT announces senior public servant for chief engineer position
The ACT has an interim chief engineer, as the government lines up a senior public servant to take on the job.
Planning Minister Mick Gentleman announced the internal appointment of senior bureaucrat George Tomlins to the acting chief engineer position.
Engineers Australia ACT manager Keely Quinn said it was good to see the role filled after so many months of waiting, but that the territory needed to look outside government when filling the position permanently.
Steven Trask with this story about the appointment.
Canberra is about to get its first bike scheme, and it'll be dockless
Canberra is set to get its first bike share scheme, as a trial of dockless bikes begins.
Two hundred bikes will be scattered around 30 locations in Canberra's centre, and the six-month trial will begin from July 30 strictly in the city centre, the Australian National University campus and the Parliamentary Zone.
Authorities will be alerted if any of the 200 bikes leave the trial areas, but they're hopeful users will "respect the cultural and symbolic significance" of the areas.
Finbar O'Mallon explains the scheme in this report.
Trevor Dickinson takes his bus shelter obsession to the next level
Artist Trevor Dickinson's drawings of Canberra's bus shelters have morphed into mugs and playing cards, even inspired others to do a range of earrings.
But over the past two years his obsession with them has turned into something else, as he’s trawled the suburbs to track down every one of the 496 shelters.
He’s preparing for an exhibition at Canberra Museum and Gallery in October, featuring 52 drawings of the shelters, as well as a wall-sized print with photographs of all of them, numbered and ordered by suburb.