Page 1036 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
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While the Committee does not propose to divulge the likely premium, nor the costs of the proposed facility, it is apparent that the premium obtained could only finance approximately 50 per cent of these facilities.
So already that promise is going backwards, and no doubt it will be like the White Industries building, which started with a series of office blocks and car parks and wound up with more office blocks and no car parks. What is going to happen to these facilities? Are we really going to get any of them?
The report continues:
While the Committee does not suggest that there has been any attempt to mislead the Canberra community -
That committee might not suggest it but I do suggest it -
it is apparent that there is a perception that the premium obtained would be sufficient to finance the total community package. This is clearly not the case.
That is the sort of thing that this community has been lured into.
Look at the recommendation on page 18, that "the Government ensure that sufficient resources be allocated to enable the completion of the community facilities". Where are these resources coming from? What have we got at the moment? We are looking at a budget and we are borrowing $62m for capital works. What are we going to borrow to do those and where is that money really coming from? Are we actually going to wind up being the community that really supports the casino out of its own capital budget in an indirect way? That is the way things are beginning to look.
According to Mr Whalan, all the studies that have been done have confirmed the advantages of the casino. Certainly they have confirmed some of the advantages of the casino but they have also confirmed many of the disadvantages of a casino. Mr Humphries in his speech the other day talked about weighing the balance and how the balance in favour of a casino and against a casino worked. His conclusion was that things come out in favour of the casino, and that happens to fall in line with Liberal Party policy. However, two other people found the balance went strongly the other way.
I will go back to the comment by the Deputy Chief Minister on employment for the young. What sort of employment are we talking about, what is this casino really going to offer Canberra, and is it the sort of employment that we want our young children to be involved with?
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