Page 2469 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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That is what I said in those hearings. Mr Smyth then took the matter up again in estimates, as is his wont, and asked me:
Were there 150 scholarships? I see the notes say that the number may vary.
I said:
No. The 2007 scholarship numbers are 164.
I said that I signed off on that in March 2007. To suggest that at any point I misled the public accounts committee is an inaccurate statement. I contested that all through the estimates process, and I still contest that I misled that committee. I have just quoted exactly what I said. Yes—and I make no qualms about this—we made a business decision to increase the level of assistance to athletes but also to reduce the number of athletes that we were supporting. I said that we would look at similar sized jurisdictions. There was Tasmania, with 103. They have a larger population than us, and they support only 103 athletes. The Northern Territory, with a smaller population than us, supports 150. We support 164; matter closed.
Mr Smyth: But the target is 150.
MR BARR: The 164 are funded through the program—and funded to Australian average levels of assistance. We were providing them with only about 60 per cent of the equivalent levels of assistance in other jurisdictions. Under the previous government, in order to be counted as an athlete, if you got a T-shirt and a water bottle from the academy of sport you were counted as part of the program. I do not consider that support for elite athletes. Giving them a water bottle and a T-shirt and letting them attend the gym for one session to count them in the figures is not quality support for our elite athletes.
Let me turn to tourism. Mr Smyth has made much of seeking to denigrate the work of Australian Capital Tourism to suggest that the organisation has been gutted—that it has lost half its staff, that the government has cut half the staff. The information that I provided to him in estimates, and that I continue to provide, is that there was a reduction in the number of staff at Australian Capital Tourism from 53.8 FTE to 41. In anyone’s language, that is not a halving of the staff in the tourism authority.
Mr Smyth: Are all the positions filled?
MR BARR: It is 41 positions within Australian Capital Tourism.
Mr Smyth: Yes, but are they filled?
MR BARR: Yes: 41 ongoing positions in Australian Capital Tourism—all filled. We welcome our new general manager, Simonne Shepherd, who is a fantastic addition to the team at Australian Capital Tourism. In making the decision to bring that back within a department, we made a number of administrative savings, not least in ministerial support. The DLO in my office takes on the role of sport, recreation, industrial relations and tourism, so tourism is not having to fund an entire ministerial support officer in the way it previously was. That is a saving made.
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