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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (8 December) . . Page.. 3987 ..

MS CARNELL: As Mr Osborne will be aware, I gave him all of the figures related to his question very soon after question time. Where does the $13m figure come from? Of that, $8.5m is for expenditure - I do not have the figures with me, so I am running on memory here - and $4.5m is for capital works. That comes to the $13m figure. Off the $13m figure comes the revenue. The revenue of course is ticket sales, corporate sponsorship and a number of other smaller items.

As I said yesterday, if nobody turned up, if not one person came, the commitment of the ACT Government and CTEC would be around about the total expenditure. There is no doubt that about that. That information has been on the table from the first time those opposite, particularly Mr Quinlan, were briefed. I have the briefing papers from that particular meeting.

It is quite clear that there are risks involved in the super 8s. Those risks are things like nobody coming, it being extremely wet and a number of other things that can happen. On the other side, there are significant upsides. That is what we debated in this place. That was in the documents that Mr Quinlan and, I assume, others were given during the briefing - what the risks were and what the upsides were.

As members would be aware, a business case was put together and a risk analysis was done for the first year - again I do not have the papers with me, so I am running on memory - on the basis of 50,000 people attending the event. The point was made that some 140,000 people attended the first year of the Adelaide event, and Adelaide is a damned sight further away from a major population centre than the ACT is. Avesco, the company that Mr Corbell greatly maligned in this place, guarantees the ACT a number of things, mostly that the drivers, the cars and the event would come to Canberra.

It is true that with any major event, whether it be Floriade or whatever, you can have huge amounts of rain or something else can go wrong. There is a risk. Anything worth doing has a risk. If it did not have a risk, everyone would have done it already. This Government is willing to take risks for the benefit of Canberra in the longer term.

The sales of tickets already are very good, though details on corporate sales will not be available, as members would be aware, until final approval for where the corporate stands and corporate tents will be comes from the NCA and the Federal Government. As we saw the other day, the Senate was very positive about the event.

I believe strongly that this will be a great event for Canberra. On that weekend, the June long weekend next year, will see the Brumbies playing in Canberra, the Raiders playing in Canberra and the V8 cars racing in Canberra.

Mr Kaine: On a point of order, Mr Speaker, can I draw your attention to the question of relevance? I thought the question was about the V8 car race. I do not know how the Brumbies and - - -

MS CARNELL: If Mr Kaine does not understand the risk of staging a major event that pulls people to Canberra, then I am very sad that Mr Kaine has forgotten about risk-benefit analyses.

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