Page 740 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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there is the thanks program, which spends $30,000 a year. On the sports loan interest subsidy scheme significant funds have been expended and this goes up to 2015.
Over and above that, significant capital works have been achieved by the government, such as the hockey centre which has just opened and is already host to a major international tournament. Significant major construction works are currently being undertaken at Mount Stromlo. There is a brand new world-class criterium and cross-country course. The downhill cycle course has already attracted the national championships for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. We attract the 24-hour downhill cycling event to the ACT every year. There are also the Pacific School Games recently announced by the minister for sport which, through ACT government facilitation and funding, will be held in the ACT in 2007.
This government has a deep and abiding commitment to the place and importance of sport and recreational activity within this community. Mr Speaker, you lead by example, with constant jogging, as I do. In a private capacity, over the years I have worked assiduously year in and year out to ensure that the benefits and fruits of public participation in physical activity are available to all. I initiated and managed for 20 years the Belconnen community fun run. I initiated the women’s fun run which, coincidently, will be run again next year for the 20th year. I initiated and was the initial manager for the Brindabella classic—the major road distance race in the ACT.
I know all about mass participation in physical activity and the organisation of it through my most time-consuming physical activity of choice—namely, running. Members of this government have a deep, personal and abiding long-term community interest and involvement in this. I have had over 20 years of direct involvement in event management in running within the ACT. This is indeed an area which this government have enhanced and continued funding. We have embraced across a whole spectrum the importance of sport and recreation.
In the context of the budget these are issues that will be pursued. I support and endorse almost everything Mr Stefaniak and Mr Mulcahy have said around the importance of sport and recreation—that it should be embraced, facilitated, supported and pursued in government—for the very reasons that have been articulated. I do not disagree with a single thing in Mr Mulcahy’s analysis of the linkages between physical activity and sport and the major issues we face as a society in relation to obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but, in the context of the role and responsibility of the cabinet budget process, the report on the development or commissioning of a major functional strategic review has not yet been finalised and delivered to government.
It is difficult to accept—and I know no government would accept it—the sort of commitment the opposition, through this motion, seeks to achieve or excite from the government. Yet here and now, in advance of advice through the functional strategic review on an optimal structure and method of service delivery to meet government and community priorities—before the report has even been written and delivered, before we know even what it recommends or says, before we even see the detail of the discussion it contains—the opposition presents motions to the Assembly calling on the government to ignore whatever the report says. Their attitude is: “Do not even bother to read it. You have commissioned a major review, the first ever major functional strategic review since self-government; you have indicated that it will play a significant role in your cabinet
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