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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 9 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2580 ..

MR BERRY: Mr Humphries interjects, "You are negative about this". I am negative about the Government's performance, for good reason. Bruce Stadium, Feel the Power and so on are good examples.

Mr Hargreaves: And Kinlyside.

MR BERRY: I forgot Kinlyside for a moment. We should not let that fade from memory either.

Ms Carnell: We think Bruce Stadium is a great stadium. We are proud of it.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell says that she is proud of what she has done at Bruce Stadium. I reckon by the end of the Olympics it will have cost us $50m or $60m.

Mr Humphries: This the Working Capital man with his accounting machine.

MR BERRY: I am prepared to toss a coin on that. Which way do you reckon it will come down - $50m or $60m? It will be one or the other, will it not? This appropriation is to feed the Government's hunger for glitzy events, but you would have to be sceptical about it. We want this to succeed, because a significant amount of territory money has been put into it. I hear that the people who are making the decision will be making it this week. I trust they will make it for the ACT.

I heard the feeble efforts of somebody from Townsville in relation to the Townsville bid. I am sure Townsville has some particular attributes which are saleable around the world, but nothing like we have here. They might say that they are more deserving of it. I think we need a few successes in the ACT pretty soon, because this Government's record in relation to these matters is appalling. I want this to succeed. There is a strong chance that it will provide an economic benefit to the tourism industry. CTEC's credibility needs to be rebuilt too. I think they have suffered a few blows in the past, mostly from the interference of government. I want this event to succeed; Labor wants this to succeed. If the economic benefits are to be achieved, it will have to succeed.

I want to talk about the hospice for a minute or so. You can add the hospice to the list of disasters which have been associated with this Government's management of the territory's finances in the past. It is now quite clear that the Chief Minister either recklessly or deliberately put the Territory in a position where it is going to have to fund another hospice. (Extension of time granted) There is a debacle going on now about where it should be sited. I am absolutely certain that if the Government had had the courage in the first place, or the will - and I say again I do not think it did have the will - to defend the existing hospice site, it could have bluffed the Federal Government. But from the outset the Chief Minister opposed the hospice being established on the Acton site, and I suspect she operated in a way to make sure her predictions would come true in government.

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