Page 3495 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 12 October 1994
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The nearest house in the Ridgeway, which is in New South Wales, is some 1.6 kilometres from the motor facility. I am advised that the only complaint now seems to come from one particular person. In the last 12 months, that person has been responsible for some 36 per cent of all noise complaints made to the ACT authorities. That would indicate that the person might be somewhat eccentric or overzealous, or possibly both.
There have also been a number of allegations made by various people in relation to this matter. They range from bias in terms of what happens on the Ridgeway, to a lack of proper sound equipment being used up there, to people up there - the complainant, I understand - having a defective sound measuring device, and a number of other matters which I do not intend to canvass today. I think that is an unfortunate situation. It would seem that the ACT Government has to be very cautious when looking at the complaints by that particular person. I stress that, to my knowledge, there have been none from Oaks Estate since the idea of using the Sutton Park facility as the major raceway ceased to be on the table. It is certainly very dangerous for the ACT Government to go against the sensible wishes of many Territory citizens and be guided by what appears to be the complaint of only one person in New South Wales. That is a strange situation indeed.
Madam Speaker, there are a lot of people in the ACT who participate in motor racing. There are some 3,000 active participants in the sport here, I am told. They are riders, drivers and officials. They range from children of seven years to the elderly. In addition, in the ACT, there are many thousands of supporters and people who simply like racing and who go to these events as spectators. Motor racing in Canberra has some very big ramifications in bringing people from outside Canberra to the city. Even for go-kart racing, you might have 70 or 100 karts participating on any one day. People come from Sydney and as far afield as the Gold Coast, Albury-Wodonga, Dubbo and Melbourne for those events. Naturally, Canberra people would go to some of those places, too, for events. It is very much a family day as far as that sport is concerned. Even something as low-key as that tends to generate about $20,000 because many of the people coming to the ACT for that activity have to stay in hotels. That sport has done a number of studies, which show that about that amount of money is spent and that a lot of good hotel accommodation is used by participants from outside the ACT. That is at the lower end of the scale.
At the top end of the scale, we have the Esanda rally, which is big news for Canberra. It is very popular. It brings in a lot of tourist dollars. It positively promotes Canberra to international and national visitors as a great place to go to, because it is held in a wide range of areas of the ACT and people can see how beautiful the ACT is. There is big potential for major race meetings in Canberra. A grand prix through the streets of Canberra has been mooted. I imagine that it would need a section 16 exemption. Motor racing is big business. Many people lamented the grand prix going to Adelaide due to Malcolm Fraser's inactivity and perhaps a bit of overzealousness on the part of a couple of people in a few suburbs here who complained. South Australia was delighted to get it; but South Australia is now very upset that it has lost the grand prix to cash-strapped Victoria, which spent a lot of time and money in taking the grand prix away from South Australia. I think that is indicative of how big motor racing is and the potential it has to generate tourism and tourism dollars.
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