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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 3198 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

both past and present, have failed the ACT sporting community. I've been looking at the ACTSPORTS State of sportsgrounds in the ACT report from October 2002; and not one surveyed sporting organisation reported that the grounds they were using as being better than average, and only eight out of the 43 organisations thought the grounds they were using to be of an average condition.

ACTSPORTS was forced to conclude that the state of sporting fields is well below acceptable, despite already having a report from February 2001 that raised the same concerns. It appears that, even though this information has been supplied to both previous and current governments, there has been little done to rectify this situation.

The ACTSPORTS report also recommended that the government make the maintenance of sportsgrounds a strong priority in order to protect themselves from the heightened chance of litigation that will accompany increasing incidences of injury. While I understand the government allocated in 2002-2003 over $1 million on many important sportsground improvements, my understanding is that not a single one of the things addressed by the spending of this $1 million actually addressed the concerns raised in the ACTSPORTS report.

Of particular concern, I think, is the Hawker oval, the home of softball in Canberra. There were concerns raised that the Hawker ovals did not meet the Australian Softball Federation's standards; they weren't up to standard in February 2001 and they weren't up to standard by December 2002. My understanding is they still are not up to standard, and money won't be available to bring the ovals up to standard until 2004-2005, assuming the government remembers to allocate this funding in the next budget.

Despite not having standard playing fields, Canberra Softball has won the Waratah League grand final in the last fortnight, hosted teams from California and has had 18 ACT players-both men and women-make national teams. If we are to encourage local sport and local Canberrans playing sport at a national or international standard, then we should be making sure that the ovals and fields that they are competing on are of national standard.

I have spoken previously about elite women soccer players having to play on substandard fields because their competition is deemed to be of a lower grade than the men's competition, and I know of women who play at a national level actually receiving quite significant injuries from playing on substandard fields. Concerns have been raised by both ACT Women's Soccer and ACT Netball about the Calwell district playing fields. These organisations complained about poor surfaces, but in 2002-2003 government allocated money for training lights. Of course lights are helpful, but it will result in the situation that players will be able to see the potholes that they're falling over as opposed to actually fixing the potholes. A twisted ankle for a national soccer player is quite significant.

These continuing surveys show that the situation is simply not good enough. Even the jewel in the government's crown, AFL, has been sadly neglected. We are subsidising first-class facilities for an interstate team to play a handful of matches in the ACT, but I understand that players on the Ngunnawal fields have to dodge exposed sprinklers that have jagged edges. Again, this is quite unsafe.

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