Page 4936 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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I think Labor's achievements in sport have been good ones, and they have been welcomed by the community. The sports community will particularly welcome the establishment of a sports council. We are ideologically different from the former Government. This is a committee that we have established to firm up our commitment and to provide us with the level of consultation that we require in the development of sport policies for the Territory.
MR STEFANIAK (8.39): I will make just a couple of points in my second, and last, speech on this matter. In relation to a couple of points that the Deputy Chief Minister made concerning the Bruce Stadium, I will say this for Mr Collaery: I noted with interest, during his time in the Alliance Government, a very genuine and a quite good attempt to clean up what was a pretty messy contract, which was signed on 24 June 1989. I certainly do not mind putting on record that, whilst I would certainly disagree with Bernard Collaery on a number of points, I was quite impressed with the way that he went about attempting to get the best deal for the Territory, and I think for all sporting bodies, in sorting out what was a pretty unfortunate contract - drawn up, I think, by a firm of accountants, rather than lawyers, in June 1989.
In relation to the Health Promotion Fund, I was interested to hear the remarks of the Deputy Chief Minister. The importance of that fund for sport should not really be lost on anyone here, because that fund does provide, and can provide in the future, through the use of tobacco taxes, a very major sponsorship source for sport and for other activities. It is interesting to look at the amounts of money that people applied for. The figures that I recall from the Alliance Government, after about 12 months' operation of that fund, were something like $1.9m for sports related groups, $1.6m for health related groups, and only $180,000 for arts related groups. These were figures that I actually saw at some time during the period of the Alliance Government - the amounts that people actually had applied for, not that they necessarily got anything like that amount.
That just shows how many sporting groups there are out there and how keen they were to get hold of that sponsorship dollar. The reason that that fund was set up was to buy out tobacco sponsorship - and primarily to buy out tobacco sponsorship of sport. The tobacco companies certainly are not stupid. They have a very pernicious product, which they push. It is still, perhaps unfortunately, a legal product; but efforts have been made to wean people off that product, and that is slowly having some effect.
Mr Berry: We will not ban it, or fine people for smoking it, Bill.
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