Page 319 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 31 May 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
name of the Lord. The kinds of films I see do not have much in them about rugby league, although I would be prepared to accept the assertion that Baron Munchausen once coached the Raiders, or as they are sometimes known, the Vikings - that great race of warriors who used to play rugby league, I understand, on their incredible ships with Hagar back in the twelfth century. I should say, by the way, I am wearing the tie of Penn State University and this is the symbol of the Penn State football team, the Nittany Lions. I hope one day that great game of gridiron will be played at Bruce Stadium.
I do recognise the problems, but I stress the national significance of the Bruce Stadium, not regional and local significance. My worry is that a national facility that has held the World Cup, as Bill Wood has rightly said - and I was there for all three days of it - will be dominated by a local team from one code of football and that that one code would be given an unreasonable advantage over other sports. What about netball, men's or women's hockey, an international sport in which Australia is pre-eminent? What about equestrian sports?
Mr Whalan: You cannot swim on the grass, Hector.
DR KINLOCH: But I worry that one code of sport will get this particular stress at the Bruce Stadium. I am quite prepared to be a convert, if Mr Whalan will take me to see a game, and perhaps I could do a review of it.
I now come, however, to a prejudiced view and a particular care. I have been a continuing member of the Achilles Club, the Oxford and Cambridge Athletics Club. I ran 100, 220 and a quarter for Cambridge for three years - you would never know it now - and I have travelled in those chariots of fire. I care a great deal about track and field athletics. I deeply worry - and I join with Bill Stefaniak in this - about the playing down of the importance of track and field athletics, not only for little athletics and for the general athletics of Canberra, but for the kind of international arena that Canberra represented for the World Cup and for the athletic activities of the Australian Institute of Sport. I do ask, deeply and caringly, that it not just be a question of a warm-up track, but that that stadium - the venue, after all, for the World Cup, which is surely historic - be maintained as a track and field stadium, whatever else it may be used for. I do recognise the other uses to which the stadium can be put.
I am also worried - and this is perhaps a subsidiary point - about our friends in New South Wales. The Deputy Chief Minister quite rightly talked this morning about our regional associations. I would want this Assembly to be well aware of our friends across the border in many directions, and especially to be in close connection with the people of Queanbeyan, the people of nearby New South Wales, who also have a great concern for a code of football
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .