Page 3000 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 October 2022
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really good program. It is one that I will be watching closely, and one that I hope delivers great social and economic benefit to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Canberrans growing businesses here in Canberra and striving to succeed socially and economically.
When it comes to some of the supports for the tourism industry, the Chief Minister and I—and my colleague Ms Clay, if I can throw her in it too—have had the occasional argy-bargy about the virtue of domestic travel over planes. Until we get a federal government with the chutzpah to give us high speed rail along our eastern seaboard, planes will unfortunately continue to be a mode of travel for domestic and international tourists. I still think that there is work for the government to do going forward to increase our tourism footprint, not just around the territory but around our more localised region.
A lot of the money that is being spent on tourism, as wonderful as it is, if you put it on a map would almost be in a two-kilometre radius of the CBD, which makes sense, and I get—it is where most of our things are, and that is why most of the people come here. I know the work I have been doing with the Minister for the Environment is a good example. They have carriage of taking care of our beautiful places like Tidbinbilla and Namadgi. There is so much tourism opportunity and economic opportunity in, can I say, our regions, in our postage stamp of a territory. I would like us to think creatively in forward budgets, when we think about our tourism spend, about how we can make sure that when people are coming to Canberra to visit Parliament House or the museum, they are also going down to Tuggeranong, checking out Tidbinbilla and having lunch at one of our good cafes.
Mr Cain spoke very passionately this morning about the virtues of some beautiful spots out in his electorate in west Belconnen. I am Canberra born and raised, and I have never been there before. Now I know; now I have to go.
Mr Cain: I will take you there.
MR DAVIS: Thank you, Mr Cain. Wouldn’t it be great to think about highlighting some of those places so that tourists from around our country, in particular, do not think of Canberra as just Parliament House and museums. We are a city of nearly half a million people, with a lot of beautiful history, art, culture, small community events and thriving local businesses in our regional centres. It would be wonderful to make sure that some of those people are travelling here too.
The last thing I will say on the sports infrastructure spending is that, obviously, you will recall that I brought a motion to this Assembly in April 2021 asking for a raft of work—mainly policy work. It was not in the style of big-ribbon cutting, Styrofoam cheque infrastructure projects but a lot of policy work that I thought we were lacking in that portfolio. We were due to have a response in December 2021. We did not. We got an update in April of 2022, and it still seems that some of that work is ongoing.
One of the things I would have loved to have seen in the budget was a bit more money appropriated for staff. It would appear—benefit of the doubt, glass half full—that maybe this work is not happening with the speed the Assembly asked for, perhaps because there is a lot of pressure on staff. We heard that in our estimates. Maybe, just
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