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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (9 August) . . Page.. 2700 ..

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no point of order. Let us carry on.

MR BERRY: Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is about this report and it is about a style of management which has given us these results. The reason I raise those other unfortunate events is that they are exemplars of this government's performance on a wide range of issues. Fortuitously, they were able to get an extra $250 million from the Commonwealth government in the course of their period in office and they are claiming credit for it in terms of their bottom line, but we would have been $100 million better off-

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have heard about that, Mr Berry; let us hear about the report.

MR BERRY: I am just trying to make the point. I think a couple over there might have missed it.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Come on, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: Mr Deputy Speaker, I hesitate to repeat the figure because of the ire I might raise with you in the chair. It is impossible to look at this report without reflecting on the past. It is impossible to look at this report without reflecting on what is going to happen in the future and how future governments will have to cope with the high expenditure that will result and the cost in some other area of CTEC's operations without another infusion of cash from the ACT budget. There will be a problem with the fifth year if this race does not get more money; that is pretty obvious. We will run out of money for the fifth year of the event. It is going to cost us, I think, about $4 million a year. When we get to the fifth year, the cash is just not going to be there.

Some other government will have to sweep up this mess. If no additional money is put into this event, CTEC will have to take money from somewhere. It will have to take it from its advertising budgets, its promotion budgets and other areas, which will certainly cost jobs in CTEC to try to fund this shortfall. It will also, I think, draw Floriade into focus. What will happen to Floriade? Will CTEC be attracted to the idea of having Floriade only every second year? I can sense that recommendation coming, because the cash has to come from somewhere.

Every time members of this government get their fingerprints on an issue which, on the face of it, looks like some aspect of bread and circuses and they consider that they are going to be able to impress the community with the can-do approach to government that they have fostered since they came to this place, we end up with a mess. It started with the style of government which gave us the hospital implosion, which I have not mentioned before, and flowed on to others which I have mentioned before and which, because of your insistence, I will not repeat, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I am sure that more will come out of this as we get a chance to examine the figures more closely. Let us go again to ticket sales. One-day tickets went down from 46,182 to 26,000. Anybody could predict that they would fall, because the novelty effect of the event for the local community would drop off. Everybody would know that. Even I could guess that. Three-day ticket sales only fell slightly. They held pretty well. They were a couple of hundred down. Nobody would be that disturbed about the three-day tickets,

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