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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 313 ..

MS TUCKER: I ask a supplementary question. I have also been told that on Tuesday night of last week a number of people and associated motor vehicles were seen cleaning out the stormwater channel between Wentworth Avenue and Lake Burley Griffin, presumably to remove the mud that had washed down from Manuka. Could you advise whether these were employees of Barry Morris or were government employees and, if they were government employees, whether Barry Morris is being charged the full cost of cleaning up the stormwater drains downstream from the Manuka site.

MR SMYTH: I am aware of that clean-up, Mr Speaker. When the silt was discovered, the developer was made to clean it up and has borne the full cost of cleaning up any mess that was made and restoring the stormwater drain to the condition that it should be in.

MR QUINLAN: My question is to the Chief Minister, who, it has been recently confirmed, answers questions on Bruce Stadium. Yesterday we found out that the Chief Minister does not know, or at least would not tell us, how many corporate boxes were sold or whether naming rights had been sold. We were informed that the marketing campaign by a crew that have not done much since Cazaly played for Carlton was performance based, which I suspect is code for: "We have incurred some substantial expenditure, but we will incur more if the promoters actually sell anything". Can we get an update on negotiations with the Federal Government, given Saturday's Canberra Times report that a senior officer of the administration thought that they would be resolved in a month? The representative of the Federal Minister for Finance and Administration, Mr Fahey, did not agree with that. The Minister's representative thought that they need to value it and sell it, so they have not even got to the valuation stage. Can we have an update, given that we have spent a lot of money there and we are now thinking about negotiating to buy it? If you want the question put another way, how do you get yourself in a situation where you spend over $30m on something that you then turn around and start negotiating on buying?

MS CARNELL: I wonder whether Mr Quinlan would like the answer to the question from yesterday now or later. He made some very interesting suppositions in his preamble to his question. He suggested that my comments yesterday on the marketing were simply ambiguous. Mr Quinlan asked me a question yesterday on the number of corporate boxes that had been sold. A total of 40 corporate boxes have been sold to date and a total of six corporate suites have been sold to date. I expect that the number of suites sold will be at least 10 in time for the new rugby union and rugby league seasons, which open next month.

There are two other issues which members should be aware of. The first is that suites will be available for occasional hire on an event-by-event basis, and the Government expects that a significant number of suites will be taken up on that basis. The second issue is that you have to appreciate that this is the first season that this product has been offered in the Canberra market. People are used to corporate boxes. Selling some 40 is a really good outcome. However, corporate suites are very much a new product. Sales so far have

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