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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2905 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

In terms of the logic of where ovals should be, there has been logic to it being in Urban Services. It could be part of a general greenfield maintenance of other open spaces that Urban Services do. That was the case prior to 1994 at least. It might have been earlier if it occurred under you, Mr Speaker, but under Mr Lamont the ovals were certainly part and parcel of sport and rec. They are now back there, and I do not think that is illogical.

Some benefits can be had from that. Local councils look after ovals; they do the work Urban Services does a lot of in Canberra. That may be a reasonable move, and maybe it does not make too much difference. But that was a reasonable comment in the government response, and I want to be fair and acknowledge that. As a former sports minister, I certainly do not have a huge problem with that.

I hope this government, when it looks at saving money-as it haphazardly seems to have done in a couple of areas of this budget-does not do anything as silly as it did when it cut the sports budget by 2 per cent and did that by making 27 ovals low maintenance. I am delighted to have had a significant hand in bringing probably half of those back. A couple more need to be brought back to full maintenance. My colleague Mr Pratt, the shadow sports minister, has made comment on that in recent times.

I would commend to the Urban Services Minister, who looks after that now, to look at bringing several more of those low maintenance ovals back so that people can participate in good, healthy activity. It is not just organised sport; it is also people enjoying the open amenity of those suburban ovals and ovals around schools. That is especially important for our kids. I do not want to foreshadow a motion that is coming on tomorrow, but I know of the concerns of one of the government members about unhealthy kids. The more encouragement we can give to kids to get out in the open air-and in their local area-and be healthy, the better. And ovals help there.

I am looking at the time and am not going to go over my initial 10 minutes, but I reserve the right to say something more on a couple areas, and I still need to give a bit of an economics lesson to Mr Quinlan on one point.

I was a little concerned to see pay parking in the budget. It is something the bureaucrats always bring up. I can remember that in the first budget the Carnell government had back in 1995: "Let's bung in pay parking at Belconnen and Tuggeranong." We resisted that. There are many low income earners in those areas who will be adversely affected by pay parking, and I note as well that the anticipated revenue is not huge.

There is a lot of pay parking already in Canberra, and this could well turn out to be an unreasonable slug to many residents of Tuggeranong and Belconnen, many of whom are struggling and just do not need that additional impost. It is unfortunate that this government in its first budget has succumbed to this measure. It is something that cropped up several times when we were in government and is something we rejected on the basis of equity and of not overburdening the ACT taxpayer, especially in areas where the average income is not as high as others. That caused me some concern.

I am pleased to see some areas where the former Liberal government's plans have been continued. I am pleased to see the William Hovell Drive extension being dealt with. I do not think the government put that back a year; I hope they did not. Perhaps someone on the other side can tell me. It is something that is very much needed and something that

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