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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4275 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

The Government also intends to build up to 15,000 semipermanent seats which will be used at both locations. Those seats will be designed so that they can be used at Bruce Stadium for Olympic soccer and other events in 2000 as well as other major sporting events like the Brumbies or Super League finals at the stadium. This upgrading program, in tandem with the redevelopment of Bruce Stadium, will see Australian football, cricket and the rectangular field football codes given access to state-of-the-art facilities. At the end of this development, Mr Speaker, these three major ovals in Canberra will be state-of-the-art facilities, and that is good for all the sports and organisations that will use them.

It seems that the B team, unfortunately, is learning from the failed A team and is continuing to play the game by attempting to disparage anything positive done by its opposition. Maybe it is because they do not have the skills or the commitment to do otherwise.

MR HIRD: I have a supplementary question. Mr Berry took a point of order and said that there was only an A team. Could the Minister enlighten us as to whether a Mr Ted Quinlan, a candidate for the Labor Party in Molonglo, stated in the Canberra Times that there was an A team and a B team?

MR SPEAKER: Order! That is not relevant to the question that you have asked.

MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Chief Minister. I refer her to comments at the Property Council conference last week about the "transition that we had to have". We have seen personal bankruptcies rise by nearly 38 per cent in one year, with similar rises in business bankruptcies. Was this a necessary transition?

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I wonder how many times those opposite will mislead this Assembly by misquoting from an address that I made last week. Mr Speaker, quite seriously, I have made it clear time and time again that I did not make the statements that those opposite are saying that I made. If those opposite want me to go through the state of the ACT economy again, I am very happy to do that. I am very proud that this city has pulled out of the recession that it did have last year as quickly as it has.

In trend terms, compared with October 1996, employment is up by 4.4 per cent, unemployment is down from 8.6 per cent to 8.4 per cent, and there has been no increase in the number of unemployed people despite the fact that we had a participation rate increase from 71.4 per cent to 72.6 per cent. The ANZ job advertisement trend figures increased by something like 2.1 per cent in October, which is the highest level since the Howard Government took office. We have had seven consecutive months of increases in retail sales, and 12 consecutive months of increases in motor vehicle registrations. I can go on and on. We have even had an increase, in the figures that came out today, in residential building approvals - an increase of something like 7.9 per cent over September 1997. Over the last two months some $400m worth of new development in the ACT has been announced. I would have thought those opposite would have been pleased about that, but they simply cannot be positive about anything.

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