Page 3462 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 October 2022
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I was at a recent meeting of CORC, Canberra Off-Road Cyclists. We heard some great updates from the Stromlo site managers on that point. I am pleased to see Minister Steel’s amendment to the motion, which refers to some of the progress we are making that will help with that.
We have a new Stromlo volunteers program that has just started. That is looking really promising. We heard an update about sponsorship deals that might be coming. That sounds like a great idea. I know we are using those sorts of business models over at the arboretum, and that is working really well.
We have heard before in the Assembly about different options. If we charge for parking, maybe that money will get reinvested in Stromlo. There are different ways so that, if we generate revenue from Stromlo, it might get reinvested there. All of that is really promising, and it is also consistent with how we manage our facility at the arboretum. So that is good news. It is also important that we make sure that we remember previous commitments for funding and that we follow through on those.
I have asked a lot of questions in estimates, in committees and in the Assembly about funding for mountain biking and about our future plans. Some of those have been about previous commitments. Some of those have been about some of the newer issues that I was not aware of and that the community raised with me. I will mention one of them. We put a value on the wood in our pine plantations in Canberra, in our forests, but we do not actually put a value on the volunteer-built tracks. We have all of these recreational trails and tracks there. That means when government decide what the best use of that land is, and whether to chop it down and sell the wood or preserve it for those tourists trails and that recreational space, they have a dollar figure on one side of that equation, but they do not have a dollar figure on the other side.
There are quite a lot of small and sensible ways that we could change that balance to make sure that we understand the value that mountain biking brings, as a sport, for health and for fun, as well as in terms of economics, tourism value and recreational dollar value.
There is absolutely enormous potential in mountain biking in Canberra. The 2021 mountain bike report said that interstate riders are contributing $30 million to the territory each year. That is a pretty good sum. It is about as much as Summernats. It is behind Floriade. Floriade is said to be contributing about $45 million, but it is not that far behind Floriade. When you look at it in the context of some of our biggest festivals, it is starting to look like it is a significant piece of Canberra’s recreational tourism scene.
The mountain bike strategy said that, by 2030, the cumulative economic benefit of mountain biking in Canberra could exceed $400 million, which is pretty impressive. That could also be an underestimate. If we put a bit more investment and funding into our trails and the experience, that could bring in even more. That 2021 report said that 129,000 visitors participated in cycling while visiting the ACT and 64,000 overnight domestic visitors ride the mountain bike trail network each year in the ACT. Sixty-four thousand: that is a pretty big chunk for Canberra. We are not talking about small figures here; it is a sizeable part of the scene.
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