Page 4428 - Week 14 - Thursday, 1 December 1994
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people are in an income bracket which means that they have a considerable amount of money to spend in the Territory and that the Territory is looking at something like $20m if that event is held over about a 10-day period. In May 1991 Perth hosted the Golden Oldies Rugby Tournament. About 8,000 people - 5,000 participants and 3,000 family members - attended Perth for 10 days. That brought $26m into the Perth economy. Mass participation events such as those are events that Canberra should be actively bidding for.
The staging of the Commonwealth Games in the ACT has been considered before and, obviously, needs further investigation; especially whether it is wise for Canberra to hold them. We need to look at the success or otherwise of the games that were held recently in Victoria, Canada. We are aware that Victoria is roughly the same size as the ACT. We need to look also at the facilities which we have at present and whether additional facilities might be needed to cater for mass events. We need to look at niche marketing to see whether there is a niche that the ACT could aim to get and which would be cost-effective in terms of perhaps building some additional facilities. Infrastructure costs are very expensive. Any future Assembly would need to be able to justify the costs. They are certainly areas that need looking at. Apart from major events, a number of teams and clubs regularly visit the Territory. At the other end of the scale, any inquiry would need to look at events for sporting clubs, schools and junior sports and see whether there was anything that the ACT could do to encourage further participants and tourists to come to the Territory.
The ACT Institute of Sport at Bruce is becoming a tourist venue in its own right. It is a world-class sporting institute. A number of things should be done there. There is a possibility that a centre focusing on sports science, medicine and education will be developed at the University of Canberra. By using the AIS, we have the potential to corner a particular area of the sports market that has not been developed already. As the national capital, Canberra is ideally sited. We have many overseas connections. The present focus nationally on Asia as an essential part of Australia's future could have some benefits to Canberra. A lot could be done to encourage Asian sporting teams to come to Canberra. As host to the embassies, there is a lot that can be done in terms of liaison with them to encourage their nations' athletes and, in some cases, some of the clubs that they have in their countries to come to Canberra as part of a tourist-sporting destination.
Madam Speaker, there is a lot that the committee believes can be looked at in terms of sport and tourism. The two do go very much together. As I have said, the estimate is that a third of all the tourists who come here do so for sporting reasons. There are a number of issues that have to be looked at, including whether facilities need to be upgraded, and the others that I have mentioned. The report flags some of those issues and indicates that the subject is certainly most worthy of further investigation by a committee of the next Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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