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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4327 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

We were told that there was a risk that we would have daytrippers coming down to the city. We all know that people who visit our city on a day basis rather than staying overnight spend less. So, there need to be strategies in place to ensure that those people using the train are encouraged to stay longer. It was put to us, by both government and representatives of the tourism industry, that there are two ways of doing this. You diversify your attractiveness as a destination - you have a wider range of attractions - and you improve your marketing. They go hand in hand. That is a recommendation in the committee's report. Mr Speaker, the Labor Party, I would like to think, has responded to that concern by announcing a $1m increase, over one year alone, in tourism promotion. Again, in this report, we see the importance of the committee process in developing good policy for our city.

Mr Speaker, there is one last point about this inquiry that I would like to make. The process is not just about going over what has been before. The process is about building on what has been before and showing government where it can be going in the future, where it needs to be planning and developing things in the future. If I had one concern about this inquiry it was that the current Government has not been doing the range of work that the committee believes it should have been doing in anticipating and planning for the development of what is the most significant infrastructure development project in many decades.

So, I hope that the Government takes the recommendations of this report seriously. It is a unanimous report. It is a report which highlights sensible recommendations, which, if implemented, will ensure that our city is well placed to reap the benefits of this development without incurring unintended consequences. I think that is the key issue. In this place we need to be anticipating and planning for the future development of our city. I think a close reading of the report and the implementation of the recommendations will ensure that that can occur. There needs to be strategic planning, rather than purely a reliance on a project arriving and then nothing happening or a project arriving and our assuming that there will be some sort of cargo cult flow-on of benefits. I think that strategic planning will achieve a good outcome for Canberra. I commend the report to the Assembly.

MR OSBORNE (6.15): I will be very brief. I really enjoyed this inquiry, Mr Speaker. I must admit that, when it was first proposed - I had been on the committee from 1995, with the changeover in membership, and it was something that we had looked at before from a different perspective - I was not really looking forward to it. But, having sat through the public hearings, I was very pleased that Mr Corbell had proposed that we have this inquiry. I think, far too often, as Mr Corbell said, governments and people make rash statements about how good something is going to be. When you look at this from the outside, it does look very appealing and very attractive for Canberra. With the establishment of a link between Sydney and the ACT, who would not be enthusiastic about it? But I was pleased that we went through the process of this report. Some of the submissions from different interested parties were very worth while. I think the recommendations in the report are very thorough. I commend Mr Corbell for raising this issue.

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