Page 4931 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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The chance to do that lay in this budget. It lay in this budget because there was a $3.5m surplus in the Community Development Fund. Certainly, I had my eye on a little bit of that to establish the - - -
Mr Berry: Like the $6m worth of goodies you promised everybody.
MR COLLAERY: I will come to that. I had my eye on some of that, because this was the one and only chance, given the wind-down of the Community Development Fund, to fund the establishment of a sports commission. The Government proceeded wisely. It allowed the bureaucrats, I think, six months - Mr Stefaniak may correct me - to finalise the terms of reference. That was an epic in itself - to get through what was clearly an unpalatable prospect in some senior sections of the bureaucracy, that of a statutory independent sports commission that would take the rule over sport away from the senior bureaucrats and a Minister.
The terms of reference finally came down early this year and a report was commissioned from Mr Hartung. The report came down and he recommended a low cost form of sports committee - I believe that he called it a council - but he recognised that there were funding imperatives. He suggested that the manner in which sporting activities were spread over almost every department of state, and the manner in which sports facilities were organised, some by one Minister and some by another, be rectified.
To the extent to which the Government has acted on the latter and has brought facilities together - not completely, but it has moved towards that - we support and endorse the decision. But we had not fully endorsed Mr Hartung's detailed recommendations about a sports commission. The one and only truly agreed issue was that we had to have an independent sports body. We have seen, over the years, how it has been used for pork-barrelling by the Labor Party. We wanted an independent sports body so that sport did not become a cheque a week for some Labor aspirant.
Mr Connolly: A what?
MR COLLAERY: A cheque a week for some Labor aspirant, Federal or local. Of course, I am referring to a cheque going into the pocket of the sporting organisation. Mr Connolly started when I said that. The recommendations of Mr Hartung needed a little bit of work. The Government fell, but the will of the community was there and the money was there. Instead, where did the $3.5m go? It went to the municipal recurrent budget out in Gungahlin. It went to an area for which, properly, every government, shire or other municipal authority borrows. You borrow on the municipal account so that future ratepayers pay for their infrastructure.
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