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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2382 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

There is a toilet in Stromlo Forest and ACT Forests charges one group of Canberra citizens or residents to use the toilet, and it is the monthly women joggers.

Mr Moore: How much do they charge?

MR STANHOPE: I do not know the charge, but I have had significant representations on this matter. I think this is incredibly mean spirited. It is just an absurd situation. We have a circumstance in which ACT Forests is charging women to use the toilet. It only charges the women because the men do not use the toilet, because it is much easier for men to use a tree, and that is what happens.

Mr Moore's department, through Healthpact, then subsidises the Women's Jogalong, quite rightly, because it is a wonderful event. It encourages women to participate in sport and, in effect, the entire Healthpact grant is used to pay ACT Forests for the use of this toilet. It is an absurd situation and I urge the government to address it.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Business, Tourism and the Arts and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (6.28): The simple need for the reforms would never have been there if we had not inherited a $344 million debt from the previous Labor governments. They choose to ignore that on every occasion.

MR QUINLAN (6.29): Every now and then I will respond to it: of the $344 million, $91 million is an overstatement, an abnormal item. It happened in the Carnell years and since that time our Commonwealth funding has increased by an equal amount. What have you done?

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Sitting suspended from 6.30 to 8 pm

Proposed expenditure-part 15-ACT WorkCover, $3,186,000 (net cost of outputs), totalling $3,186,000-agreed to.

Proposed expenditure-part 16-Justice and Community Safety, $97,199,000 (net cost of outputs), $17,089,000 (capital injection) and $76,282,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $190,570,000.

MR HARGREAVES (8.01): I nearly made way for Mr Moore, knowing that he is much more of an expert on the subject than I am, having done his homework very rapidly over the last few months. Mr Speaker, we talk about the budget being a budget of lost opportunity.

Mr Moore: No, that is just you guys.

MR HARGREAVES: I said "we". For the benefit of Mr Moore, "we" does not include Mr Moore. I know that Mr Moore would dearly love to join the Labor Party, but we would not have him.

Mr Berry: He would not make it through.

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