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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2217 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

about the race. He criticised the events that might have been organised surrounding the V8 car race. He criticised the time and the coolness of the weather and all those sorts of things, which you would expect. He had a shot at the organiser. I think that might have been a bit of a personal shot.

One thing he did say was that the official race day crowd figure was 50,000, which you may or may not believe; that is, two Bruce Stadiums chockers at the V8 car race. Just think about that for a moment. The V8 supercars governing body, AVESCO, has been caught telling porkies about spectator figures at other events. These are the sorts of people we are apparently dealing with in relation to the arrangements for these car races. One thing we did discover was that the race was $600,000 behind and that that was being carried forward to be repaid out of profits from the next year. I see that AVESCO already have a bid in. They want more money spent on the streets and the roads widened, because the event ended up being a bit of a fender bender event for many people. I go back to what Peter McKay said:

I cannot comment about that, other than to say that I watched a few cars bouncing around. It looked a little bit bouncy to me but they seemed to be out there enjoying themselves bashing their cars up. I could not understand it. People who drive around in historic cars would have been a bit nervous. What troubles me about this entire thing is that it sounds to me as though there is a bid in for more money to widen the streets, rip out more median strips and fix up the road surfaces. I can hear the cash register running. Do you think AVESCO are going to come forward and say, "We will pay for that"? No, of course they are not. They are going to say, "We want you to pay for it." I have been wrong before, rarely, but I predict that they will come forward and say, "We need to spend money on the surface. We need to widen the roads. Too much damage is being done, and you should pay for it." I reckon it will be millions; it will not be peanuts. I do not know what is in the contract that might tie us in to doing those sorts of things, but I will be watching it more closely as time passes.

Again, this is an issue which has not been properly thought through. It was brought to this place quickly, with the demand that we had to pass it or it would not go ahead. Again, the Assembly has been stuck with another signal of the flashy style of this government, and in particular the Chief Minister's Department, which has created so much hurt, tragedy in one circumstance, and anguish in the community over the management of the territory and its presentation to the rest of the country.

One last matter relates to industrial relations. Much was said early in this term of the Carnell conservative government about what they wanted from workers. The old Liberal ideology that you hear so often is about productivity in return for wages. That is all they can think about. They cannot think about wage justice. They cannot think about industrial democracy or all those issues which are important to the workplace. They can only think about productivity in return for wages. Over the periods of this government several thousand workers have lost their jobs, and the government has profited from that. They have profited from the pain and suffering of others. Of course it has had a lucky year this year in its budget. It is not much about good management. It is mostly about good luck and cruelty in many respects.

A debate about wages went on for some time, culminating in an agreement to give teachers a wage increase which was supplemented. The Chief Minister's own department had their wage increase supplemented, but many others have not and many others are still waiting. This is more wreckage that somebody else is going to have to clean up to make sure that industrial harmony pervades the

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