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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1620 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

This type of performance indicator would allow a far more open and easier to follow judgment to be made of what is the impact of various tourism events. Tourism being of such intense and central importance to the ACT, it is not an area where we want people dissuaded from activities simply because they fear the environmental lobby or fear that they cannot put anything on because of the type of criticism that they are likely to draw. These environmental performance indicators will actually enhance the tourism industry and make quite clear to all what sorts of rules we are following and how we are, in fact, able and willing to, and do, protect the environment whenever tourism events are held.

The redevelopment of Bruce Stadium is an ongoing issue of concern. On the one hand, I do not think there is anybody in the Assembly who does not want to see an Olympic event in Canberra. I think there is wholehearted support for that. On the other hand, it is becoming clear that this is an expensive project, and is likely to be a very expensive project. We again urge the Government to report back to the Assembly on just what commitments are going to be made, what calls there are going to be on extra public money, whether those early optimistic business plans are holding up and what is the future of the stadium. Millions of dollars have been spent on this stadium already. The ACT does not own it. We have no indication of how the Commonwealth is going to deal with it in the future, and the committee is very anxious to know that money spent on it, although necessary for the Olympics, is not spent unwisely and that we do not open up the possibility for additional expense to the Canberra community.

So, we are asking for a progress report there, for assurance that we are not just blindly heading off on a track of trying to attract Olympic events here, at great cost to the Canberra community. We believe that some expense is necessary, but we want to curtail it to the minimum possible expenditure for the maximum possible gain from the Olympics. We applaud the Government's efforts in that area; but we think that the Assembly and the community deserve a constant and open explanation about what public money is being spent and how it is being protected, so that it does not just grow into a major liability.

Within the ACT Housing area we got a little confused during the inquiry because we were led to believe that ACT Housing's capital works budget was actually available to the P and E Committee. In fact, it was; but not in the same detail as every other capital works program. As has been reported in the Assembly before, the level of detail presented to the P and E Committee this year for the capital works budget was absolutely outstanding. It is the product of years of work on trying to focus on just what the Assembly wants, what is needed in the capital works area and how best to present it. This year, for the first time, we saw some really quite good papers; but we found that there was this gap in the capital works budget papers for ACT Housing, so we are urging ACT Housing, as a matter of priority, to make sure that they put their papers in the same format, for ease of public comment, for ease of comparison with the rest of the budget and to assure the Assembly and the general public that the capital works budget for the extraordinarily large industry of ACT Housing is spent appropriately.

The next recommendation is recommendation 11. We unearthed some very interesting material in relation to Fairbairn Park. We found that there was illegal dumping going on, which is now being dealt with, as we see from the press. Again, we think that, as a matter of urgency, the Government ought to inform the Assembly as to just what is happening

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