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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2063 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

I merely need to say at this point, Mr Speaker, that the most interesting thing that came out of the Estimates Committee in relation to this is that the education department had done nothing in relation to it. There had been no consideration of the impact on local schools. There had been virtually no work done on it at all. The government relied on a 1995 promise which, of course, was quickly abandoned in 1996 and was never heard of again until 2001. It was not an election promise last time, and it was not in the government's draft budget. I think that tells you all you need to know about the free school bus scheme. It is nothing more than an election sweetener, and I will expand on that later.

Mr Speaker, I am particularly interested in the V8 car race and the constant flow of money to that race. It is said, and I have no reason to disagree, that there are great advantages from the V8 car race for the Australian Capital Territory. That is a subject of interest by the Auditor-General, and we will soon see some figures about attendance at the car race.

I recall the appropriation bill for this great race being brought before this place, and we were clearly given the impression that not one dollar extra would be needed. That was the impression that was created here. Mr Speaker, we were sadly misled.

I do not think we were deliberately misled. I just don't think the government knew what it was doing. I think it was leading itself up the garden path. So it is a question of the competence of the government, and not much more than that. Mr Speaker, we were soon brought to our senses when we had to provide an extra $4.5 million for this race over its period as a result of the government's failure to take into account measures which ought to have been taken into account in the first place.

One other interesting aspect of this was the money that is paid in administrative fees in the annual report of CTEC. CTEC was not able to tell the Estimates Committee what part of the $1.4 million in administrative fees goes to AVESCO as the owner of the V8 car race. They told us that it was commercial-in-confidence. They told us that they wrote to AVESCO and AVESCO basically did not want to tell us. So we have going to AVESCO somewhere between zero and $1.4 million, and I will bet it is closer to $1.4 million. Then we have to try to understand whether we get value for money from that contribution.

I do not think we have heard the last of the V8 car race as it absorbs more and more of the taxpayers' money in the ACT. I do not think we have heard the last on the value of that race to the territory, and whether or not it is good or not, and we have not heard the last of concern by the community about that event.

Mr Speaker, I will probably seek an extension of time in due course to get this out of the road. I also want to talk briefly about the Belconnen pool. We were informed that $270,000 has been spent on the Belconnen pool. The sod has been turned several times out there, but there is still no water to swim in. There will not be any water to swim in by the time of the next election.

I wonder sometimes what commitments the government made against building a pool in Belconnen. They must have promised somebody not to do it, as well as promised some people that they would do it. The people they promised they would not do it seem to be

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