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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 9 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2573 ..

MR STANHOPE: We have got them all now. There are two sets of figures. James Service gave Ted Quinlan and me a crowd estimate of 70,000. In a paper delivered to us by James Service last week the crowd figure was reduced from 70,000 to 50,000. The latter figure might be a more appropriate figure - I do not know. My only point in relation to this is that over the last two to three weeks we have received two sets of assumed crowd figures for the V8 car race - 70,000 and 50,000. There is a significant difference. Yet there is no explanation of why the crowd figure was changed. I am not saying which figure is right and which is wrong. I am just saying that it would have been nice to have had an explanation of why the figures changed so dramatically so quickly.

Ms Carnell: Did you ask?

MR STANHOPE: Yes. We asked for a business plan and we asked for an estimates committee. We asked for an estimates committee so that we could explore these issues along with a range of other - - -

Mr Moore: Now you are reflecting on a vote of the Assembly.

MR STANHOPE: No, I am responding to the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister wanted to know whether I asked. Yes, we did. We asked for an estimates committee so that we could explore these very issues. We were denied an estimates committee by the Government because they did not want any exploration of these issues. They did not want any exploration of the draft summary business plan. They chose to deny us the capacity to look in detail at the figures underpinning the V8 car race.

As I said, there is no doubt that the car race will go ahead. I hope it is a tremendous success. I am sure it will be exciting. I quite like car racing. I enjoy it and I look forward to this event. I hope it delivers the economic benefits that we hope for.

I will refer briefly to the other half of the Bill, namely, the hospice. I think everybody would be pleased to see the Government making provision for a replacement hospice. I have seen the initial relocation study which the Minister commissioned, the one that was based on the sites at Calvary and Lake Ginninderra, the one that now I think is perhaps - - -

Mr Moore: And Yarralumla.

MR STANHOPE: And Yarralumla, yes. It still has some currency and some relevance. The estimate for the construction of a 17- to 20-bed hospice on each of the assessed sites to date is about $4.6m. I notice from the Bill that that is roughly the sum the Government is expecting to spend on the construction of a new hospice, so the numbers do seem to be appropriate in terms of the range of sites that have been assessed. Of course, the assessment process continues, and to that extent the figures are estimates; we accept that. The assessment process at this stage, I understand, includes at least one additional site, namely, the site at Griffith.

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