Page 2211 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
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health bodies have received some $574,000 worth of sponsorship and sport has received some $437,000 worth of sponsorship. That is certainly a very necessary and useful boost to a number of bodies, especially sporting bodies, who have benefited from that Act. I hope that they will continue to benefit.
During the time of the Alliance Government I was very happy to be involved in the sports area. I was working there with the Deputy Chief Minister who finally started taking an interest in it in about August last year because there were votes in it. I suppose that during that time I was fairly happy to be - for a couple of months, anyway - sort of the de facto Minister for sport. I know that Mr Berry brought that to my attention through some racing article back in about February last year. That was very interesting, and I am very happy to see a number of achievements of this Government in that area.
Sorting out the mess of Bruce is something that this Government has undertaken. That was a Labor Government initiative - and a rather bad contract - in June 1989. This Government is in the process of trying to sort that out. That being the case, a number of other initiatives were taken there and I am pleased to see that a number of major events have been, or will be, held there, including some international soccer matches. We had a Gaelic football match there between Australia and Ireland last year; we had a gridiron invitation match; and, hopefully, there will be some more major gridiron matches there. In 1993, the World Youth Cup soccer championships will hold several matches there. I am certainly hopeful that Canberra can get rugby league and rugby union test matches there in the near future. We have, in fact, been promised some matches in 1995 in the World Cup rugby union, given that they come to Australia and New Zealand, which looks most likely.
Other major events will be coming to Canberra. They are very important in terms of sporting-tourist dollars coming into the Territory. These have been initiated by this Government, and I have certainly been pleased to have had a lot of personal involvement in them. They include the 1995 World Cup showjumping championships which will be held in Glebe Park, the 1994 world ballooning championships, the 1992 Australasian dragon boats championships and the 1994 international dragon boats championships. We are likely to get, in 1994, an Australasian golden-oldies competition, which is not all that much smaller than the international golden-oldies rugby union competition which brings in about 8,000 people. Hopefully, we look like getting that in 1995. We also have the world orienteering championships in the year 2000. All these major events - and they are major because any event that brings in over 1,000 people is seen as a very useful event which injects a lot of money into the local economy - have been initiated during the time of this Alliance Government.
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