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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2104 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

The second point, Minister, is in relation to the Visitor Information Centre. Again, you misrepresented me. I said to the Minister that I had heard anecdotally from people and from talking directly to people in the tourism industry that there was some cynicism about the amount of money the Government was spending on the Visitor Information Centre. People were asking what the point of building a centre was if people were not coming to Canberra. I then went on to say - and if you check Hansard when it comes out I am sure you will find I am correct - that clearly it is not as black and white as that, and it is not. I am not saying that no visitors are coming to Canberra. I never said such a thing. Again, the Minister chose to misrepresent my comments earlier because he is obviously trying to defend a somewhat frayed nerve over the issue of tourism.

The point I was trying to make was that it is a matter of priority. The Visitor Information Centre that was on Northbourne Avenue did serve a purpose. It is not as if we never had a visitor information centre before. There was always one there. Of course, visitors who come to Canberra need a point which serves their purposes in getting information about our city - what they can visit, what they can see, where they can stay, where they can eat and all those sorts of things. The point that I was making and the point that was being made to me by operators in the tourism industry was: What is the point of spending all that money there when perhaps it could be better spent on promotion? That is what the Labor Party has been saying consistently since the beginning of the year. What is the point?

I want to make some very specific comments about the capacity of the Minister, as the Minister was prepared to make some comments about mine. The first is in relation to what the Minister has done in responding to the crisis in the tourism industry in this town. Month after month we have seen occupancy levels and takings in this town fall and we have seen the Minister's incapacity to act on this issue. The first point I want to make is in relation to a letter that Mr David Marshall, the chief executive of Canberra Tourism, sent to Mr Denis Page, the head of the Canberra Business Council. He wrote to Mr Page saying how dismayed he was and how downright offensive he found some comments made by the Federal Minister for Tourism, Mr John Moore, about what Mr Moore thought of Canberra. According to Mr Marshall, Mr Moore said that he wished more meetings of the Federal Cabinet took place in Sydney, away from Canberra; that he detested Parliament House; and that the taxi industry in Canberra was an absolute disgrace. Mr Moore said this not in some private conversation but in front of a delegation of visiting people from Japan and in front of the meeting of Tourism Ministers and chief executives from all around Australia.

I ask this Assembly why the chief executive of Canberra Tourism would have more confidence in the head of the Canberra Business Council to represent his view than he would in his own Minister. The reason is that the Minister did not even know. The Minister had no idea, despite the fact that Mr Marshall sent him a copy. When this Opposition raised the question with the Minister in the Assembly, he feigned ignorance.

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