Page 1701 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Recommendation 54. The committee recommends that the government agrees to implement strategies jointly with the community to ensure the maintenance of sportsgrounds.
Recommendation 55. The committee recommends that the ACT government provides details of the criteria by which applications for particular sportsgrouds for exemption from stage 4 water restrictions will be assessed.
That is crucial if we are to ensure the watering of as many sportsgrounds as possible. Most importantly, the committee stated:
Given such problems as obesity and the early onset of diabetes in young people, the commitee is concerned that some grants have been reduced unnecessarily with potentially negative consequences and reduced participation in healthy activity.
The commitee also recommended that the ACT government should agree to reinstate grants for sporting and recreational organisations to the quantum of grants provided in 2005. In other words, the grants are down to about $1.9 million and they should be increased to at least $2.4 million or $2.5 million. Not much money is involved but it will give you a big bang for your buck and make all the difference for hundreds of sporting organisations that provide healthy activity for tens of thousands of Canberrans, and especially young people. If the government wants to save on expenses down the track, investing a little money now in simple things like that will go a long way towards achieving that.
Finally, we also recommended that the government agree to provide a level of financial assistance to Academy of Sport athletes that is appropriate to the circumstance of each athlete. Whilst many of those important recommendations were developed by Liberal committee members, they represent the views of the committee as a whole. I am pleased about that as there are some sensible recommendations. I think even government members of the committee support the recommendations that I read out, in particular those relating to sports. They are commonsense recommendations on which the government should act.
Liberal committee members brought down an additional and dissenting report in which there are about another 100 recommendations. We covered things such as having definable, measurable and benchmark accountability indicators and we recommended that the government table the quarterly capital works report, something that it has refused to do. Other recommendations include reporting to the Assembly on the progress and outcomes of the Shared Services Centre; improving the information made available publicly on environmental flows; providing a clear timetable for the expansion of the ACT’s economic base; reporting on the costs of arts grants programs, including the amounts given to artists; more transparency in sponsorship programs for territory-owned corporations; and more positive action in relation to CCTV networks and general security at bus interchanges, which is crucial for public safety.
Other important recommendations include restructuring the ESA; setting up an independent inquiry into FireLink; reporting on school violence and bullying; reporting on the impact of school closures; more transparency for the funding of
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