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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (20 August) . . Page.. 2414 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

confidence in that body. I shall be drawing my mind to what to do about that a little later on.

Recommendation No 24 talks about car spaces in the Canberra Stadium. I do not know how you can get Hansard to describe it, but the Treasurer's attitude at the time was one of fingers twirling in ever-increasing circles around his left ear. He was really excited by the prospect of such incisive questioning-that we would worry about a car park, two-thirds of which was already provided for. It looks like it would be a dirt or grass car park with 800 spaces. The people at Bruce Stadium said it is fine. We should be worrying about things a little greater than a car park, which does not really pose much of a problem.

That was recommendation No 24. Contrast that with recommendation No 25, which talks about the review of financial arrangements between the government and the North Melbourne Kangaroos. I am happy to go down that track-we should. Being a Collingwood supporter, quite frankly, I do not care what happens to the Kangaroos.

However, my memory suggests that there were some really good and clever business dealings between the previous government and the Cosmos. We gave them about $5,000 a game-and what happened? They disappeared off the face of the earth! Well, good!

What about the Brumbies? Admittedly, they are heroes at the moment. Good on them-all power to their arms and feet-but they were subsidised. I have forgotten the figure, but it was probably in the order of $12,000 to $20,000.

I could be way out on that one, but I will not be way out on the support we gave the Raiders of $200,000 a guaranteed gate day-or a game. There was no way, in anybody's wildest dreams, that the Raiders were able to pull that kind of gate-take in-not when they were going down to every little rugby league game in the place and handing out free tickets! They were handing free tickets out to anybody who looked like a raffle seller. So, whilst it is reasonable that we look into the review of financial arrangements with any elite sporting body, we ought to do that with a sense of history. I am sure this government does not want to repeat the monumental cock-ups that happened in the last one!

On recommendation No 40, Mr Speaker, about how the government determined that $50 million would be the appropriate amount to spend on a remand centre, I can remember having a non-budget item of $32 million there for an entire prison. For three years, I asked, "How did you make that up?" I got the distinct impression it was something that popped into somebody's head, because it is a fairly frequent figure-and that it was nothing more than that. It was a guesstimate and a provision, so that at least somebody knew how much it was. Over the years, it grew to $45 million, $69 million, $97 million and $110 million. I asked, almost quarterly-maybe even more frequently than that-"How did you work it out? Tell us how you worked it out!"

Nothing was forthcoming. Due to the persistence of Mr Osborne, who was the chair of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, and the terrier-like approach he had to extracting that information out of the government, it took only 31/2 years! Then that was an ambit figure of $110 million. So, again, I am happy to go along with the recommendation, but let us have a sense of history here.

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