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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2446 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

especially the pools, we will have some more money to go around and, hopefully, that can be put back into some of those low maintenance ovals. I accept that there probably are a few which have such little use that there may be no real need, but there are certainly some that concern me and that I would like to see something done about.

Ms McRae made a lot of mention of school sport. I have already mentioned one area in relation to ovals where a number of groups, including the school and Sport, Recreation and Racing, can participate. Basically, school sport is just that - school sport. Ms McRae, you know it is not 200 minutes because you have been participating in the round-table conference.

Ms McRae: It started there.

MR STEFANIAK: Yes, that was there, but I think that round-table conference was a most useful exercise. We have had two now, and it was pleasing to see that all the members want to continue it. It is a very useful body and a very diverse group indeed. There are Greens on it, representatives of the Independents, Ms McRae of course, and all the relevant stakeholders, and I am pleased to see that people want to continue it.

Mr Humphries: It is consultation.

MR STEFANIAK: It is consultation. It is something this Government does a lot of, Mr Humphries. I think that has proved to be very effective, and it is good to see that people want to continue it. Ms McRae knows full well that there are a lot of different activities, including - and this will be dear to Mr Humphries's heart - even the rock eisteddfod, which is physical; I think it is in schedule C, which is the range of various sporting and physical activities that kids can participate in as part of compulsory PE and sport from kindergarten through to Year 10. I think that has been a very good process. Obviously, Ms McRae, there are a few things we still need to nut out, as everyone appreciates; but that has gone very well and I look forward to its successful implementation.

One thing the Opposition have a lot of trouble realising is that we want people to participate. We appreciate that people are not going to participate in sport if you price them out of the market.

Mr Berry: What about swimming?

MR STEFANIAK: I will come to that. Six to 8 per cent of what we spend on ovals we actually get in income, and it is probably unrealistic to expect much more than that because we want people to use them. So the key to any efficiencies there is to maintain them better. With such things as the swimming pools, the Government lost, I think it was, $1.79m in the last financial year on the pools. The vast majority of that - in fact, I think it was $1.7m - was for the three indoor pools. The interesting thing is that the Tuggeranong indoor pool, a state-of-the-art pool, loses about $394,000 a year. When Mr Berry was the Sport Minister there were a couple of community groups who wanted to run that and he reckoned they could have that at least breaking even by about year two of operation. We are past that now and it is still losing money.

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