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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2919 ..

Mr Smyth and some of his colleagues are now using clichés—but to excess, I have to say. So please spare us just a little. I guess we now feel obliged to invent and build up some mantra using the schoolyard mentality that if you say it often enough it will be right. Well, I don’t think so. While you will see the fashion industry take form between now and the election, you will also see the genuine list of the achievements of this government because, yes, we have planned and, yes, we have reviewed but we have also acted.

Not only have we acted, we have done a whole lot of tidying up—and I have had to do a fair bit of it. I think the first one was CanDeliver. Does anybody remember CanDeliver? That was a fabulous idea! That was the Liberals in action on business and it cost us a few million, I think. There was a whole succession of other activities.

Mr Smyth talked about tourism and bemoaned the cessation of the V8 car race. I have heard him in other forums say, “Well, you have got to run these sorts of things for a while before they become profitable.” Well, this one was getting less profitable each year so—

Mr Smyth: So you say.

MR QUINLAN: Look at the records. It was certainly going to be some sort of J-curve, Mr Smyth. We might put it down as your J-curve. But what you could do for us, just to clarify the matter, is stand on your feet in this place or in a public forum—I do not care—and commit to bringing it back. That is what I want to hear. I do not want to hear you whinging about the “nots”—you are getting a little bit of a reputation of having too many “nots” in your conversation. Stand up in the public forum and either commit to it or forget it. Let us hear you commit, “I, Brendan Smyth, will bring back the V8 car race with the attendant expenditure. And this time I promise the public that all the costs of the race, including the overtime for urban services, et cetera, will be counted in the costing of it.”

Also, I would like to hear a commitment in relation to the dragway. I understand that you are going to spend $8 million. I think either Mr Stefaniak or Mr Smyth, or both—there has been a fair bit of repetition here today already, of course, as is usual—said $8 million was what the proponents wanted to spend. Well, they actually do not—they want to spend about $16 million. But I am happy that you are prepared to contain it at $8 million.

I would also challenge you to name the block of land that you intend to put it on, if it is not 51 or 52. They may fail. I have stood here before and said—and I am happy to stand here and say again—that there is still considerable doubt over whether we can build a dragway inside the ACT. There is that doubt because it may be that no government, no matter how much they want it, can find a block of land that satisfies all the criteria—or, to put it another way, a block of land that is not ruled out by one criterion or another. But anyway, we shall try. I have recently written to John Anderson making another plea. There has been some promise about land being freed up near the Majura Valley but there does not seem to be much action.

Mr Stefaniak talked about the ACT Academy of Sport. I have to absolutely concede that during the course of the estimates hearing there was some confusion with the numbers in

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