Page 2454 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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to have a study; or we are going to fix it and have a study. I do not know how that works but surely one would have looked at what was needed in terms of the Olympic pool and the swimming community and one would have talked to ACT swimming, because an enormous number of people are concerned about this pool.
I know people who work there who say that bolts drop out of the roof while people are swimming. So we are going to have an “expected replacement”. Again, if the minister wants to jump up and tell me I am wrong, I will be happy to hear that, and I will get up and apologise, unlike those opposite.
Mr Barr: Get used to that.
MR SMYTH: You can give me leave to apologise; I will be happy to do so, Mr Barr. But the problem here is that there is no commitment to sport and recreation in the ACT. (Second speaking period taken.) It would be great to see two real commitments from the minister: firstly, that all ovals will be resurrected after the stage 4 restrictions are lifted; and, secondly, that something will be done with the pool. I do not believe that anything is going to happen because they do not have the wherewithal.
The other thing that the minister might do when he gets to his feet is to tell us whether he will ever apologise for misleading the public accounts committee over athlete numbers. He signed a brief in early November.
Mr Hargreaves: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: is it appropriate for Mr Smyth to indicate that the minister has misled the public accounts committee? That was a direct statement.
MR SPEAKER: That needs to be a substantive motion, Mr Smyth. Withdraw it.
MR SMYTH: All right, I will withdraw it. The minister needs to tell us why he told a committee on 30 November that the decision has not been made when there was a brief signed by him two weeks earlier, saying they were going to cut the number of scholarships to 150. He knew, he did not tell the committee, and he should come down here and act in accordance with the worthless document that is the Chief Minister’s code of ministerial conduct. Maybe Mr Barr will be brave enough to come down and validate the document, and actually show that there is some proof. He did know. The brief says: “This is to confirm the verbal briefings you have in your agreement to reducing it to 150.” That is not what he told the PAC, and he should come clean on it.
In regard to tourism, it is the same old story from this government. We have seen an enormous lack of attention to tourism in this city. There was a press release yesterday announcing some more grants—that is fabulous; that is the grants program—but all of that has been cut, and we know it. It has all been cut but it is hidden, and it is going to become even more hidden and convoluted because tourism is about to disappear from the budget papers as from next year. It will all be combined into enterprise services, and trying to pick out how much is actually being spent on tourism, and what is real tourism as opposed to facilities that might be visited by a tourist is going to become obscured.
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