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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 2 Hansard (21 February) . . Page.. 504 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

promising to go down the western route. We had a lengthy debate-it probably was on 9 August-in which that route was taken off the Territory Plan. No doubt, at some stage soon people will try to put it back on there for that to occur.

Clearly, the new director of the Australian Institute of Sport has significant concerns. He has again raised the very real possibility-I am glad that no-one is saying that it is definitely going to happen, but watch this space-that we will lose one of the premier sporting institutes in the world.

Mr Corbell: Are you trying to blackmail us?

MR STEFANIAK: No, I am suggesting, Mr Corbell, that your party should adopt a bit of statesmanship in relation to that and admit that it has made a mistake.

I am amazed that the Canberra Times does not seem to think that this issue has ever been raised. It may be that the administrators, fine as they are, and the sports people at the Australian Institute of Sport are not the best lobbyists. Perhaps they concentrate on administering the best institute in the world and concentrate on heightening the athletic prowess of our athletes, which has a spin-off in this territory. They may not be as good as activists as the 200, 300 or even 400 people who wanted to push the western route so that the eastern route could not go ahead. I have said previously that, once the spur is taken out, it is arguable whether it is about O'Connor Ridge, because it is at the base of the start of O'Connor Ridge. As my colleague Mrs Cross points out, quite properly, it follows around, I think, Tucker Street and then goes through car parks. But I am not going to get into that. Clearly, the arguments were always there that the eastern route was the best one.

Mr Corbell has, quite properly, stated the real dilemma that the Labor Party has got itself into. Ms Tucker raised some interesting points there. I would tend to agree with her in terms of the inconsistencies in the promises that the ALP made. It was rather hypocritical of Mr Corbell to raise that issue in terms of the previous government, because the Liberal Party went to the 1995 election, funnily enough, on the promise of providing free school buses when we could afford to do so. Lo and behold, when we could afford to do so we bunged them in, starting in September of last year.

It could be said that we won the 1995 election partly on that promise. It may also be correct that the population did not particularly like that promise and preferred the Labor version of spending the money inside the school gate. Whether they would and how it would be done is another question, but perhaps they preferred the promise of spending the money inside the school gate and did not like us going ahead with the buses.

On that basis, if we asked the population, maybe by way of an opinion poll or by putting out a plebiscite, whether they would rather have the eastern route or the AIS being likely to go to some other state, I have a pretty good idea what the punters would say; they would go for the AIS. I point out to Mr Corbell, in terms of how effective and how relevant the Labor Party's promise might have been, that its biggest vote was in Tuggeranong. I do not think the Tuggeranong people would give a tinker's cuss as to where the route goes as it does not particularly affect them. Funnily enough, Labor's lowest vote was in the Molonglo electorate, which has O'Connor in it and that is where most of the activists came from.

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