Page 426 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 1990
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At times in government policy is developed out of the restructuring of certain areas, particularly in the welfare area. I welcome the fairly good level of bipartisanship in that area. When we are looking towards some restructuring moves in the welfare area, as we were in parts of the sporting area, we should not produce a policy that does not reflect our intentions. We are trying to bring forward our policies to reflect our real and practical intentions and aims.
I will not delay the house. This has been an empty motion, and I think we will try to give some substance to it by speaking to our policy in the time available for this debate.
MR BERRY (3.48): I think the most appropriate thing that has been said so far was said by my colleague, Mr Whalan - that more people play musical instruments than play sport. That is certainly true of the Government because for the last couple of months it has been fiddling around with the sports issue, and this hastily cobbled together sports policy demonstrates the amount of time that it has been playing with its instruments rather than getting on with the job.
Until today, the Government's lack of policy on sport in the ACT has caused a great deal of concern in the community, because the rush of blood to the head in the grab for power was followed by a vacuum in this area. The community had become quite accustomed to a very progressive attitude from Labor to the issue of sport. Mr Whalan has quite ably shown those areas in relation to which the public has become aware of our position, particularly the Bruce Stadium. There was an expectation that we would have a high standard motor racing circuit some time in the future if Labor was able to carry it through. I certainly would support the development of that proposal and hope that the Government will do something about it.
Labor gave a commitment, not only in principle but also in financial terms, to sport in the ACT. There was some criticism, as has already been said, of Labor for doing that. The community has a high participation rate in sport. As my area of interest is that of health, I hope that participation in sport will have a beneficial effect on the general health and fitness of the community. One would hope that there will be a resultant drop in health costs - that is, unless we see the sport of gymnastics replaced by boxing or some other such sport, in which case the health costs might increase.
But in the general sense, and seriously, to use a phrase coined by the Liberals, it does improve the health and fitness of the community and will contribute to a drop in health costs. That is aside from the arguments about playing sport to get fit or getting fit to play sport. I think everybody agrees that participation in sport contributes to the general health and welfare of the
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