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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3302 ..

Mrs Carnell: It drew 45,000.

MR WHITECROSS: You can check your maths again, Chief Minister. It was 40,000. That was the best of the four venues in terms of the Olympics. So we are going to do as well as the best of the four. Chief Minister, given that Mr Marshall claimed that those attending the preliminary rounds were locals who were buying their piece of the Olympic experience - he was reported in the Canberra Times last week as saying that 80 per cent of attendees at the Olympic Games were locals from the southern States - how do you expect us to match Birmingham's crowd potential, when Canberra has a population of 300,000 and the national capital region a population of 700,000 as opposed to Birmingham alone having a population of 870,000, nearly three times the population of Canberra, the State of Alabama having a population of 4.2 million, six times the population of the national capital region, and the region of Alabama and the adjoining States a population of 36 million, twice the population of Australia? Chief Minister, how can you expect to draw the same crowds to Canberra's preliminary soccer matches as Birmingham in Alabama could with that huge local population to draw on?

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am absolutely confident that we can draw the 40,000 that we are projecting. We can certainly draw more than the break even figure of some 24,000. I believe we can make the 40,000 easily, as, by the way, do the sporting organisations in the ACT and as, by the way, does Mr Marshall. The reason why we believe that is that we believe in Canberra and we believe we can do a damned good marketing job.

Mr Speaker, those opposite obviously do not realise the statistics, just in Canberra, relating to people who play soccer. My understanding is that in Canberra 15,000 households have somebody in them who plays soccer. Just in the ACT, 15,000 households have somebody who plays soccer. Add to that the region, add to that all the western suburbs of Sydney which are only a couple of hours away, and, if we want to look at the southern States, let us add in Victoria. I do not believe that 40,000 is tough at all for Canberra.

One of the things that Birmingham realised was that it was not just about Olympic soccer; it was about something they called the Olympic experience. It was about people wanting to take their kids to an Olympic event. It was like all of those Australians who still talk about having been to the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne because it was important to go along and to be part of an experience. It was also interesting, Mr Speaker, to hear the people from Birmingham speak about how it changed their city. It brought the city together and it really did change the attitude of Birmingham to their future. Now they are finalists in a number of other large events as well, because they realised that they could do it.

Birmingham was not the single biggest venue, as Mr Whitecross just said. I will not say it was misleading the house, because I would have to withdraw that, Mr Speaker; but I would have to say that the comment by Mr Whitecross was not the truth. It is quite that simple.

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