Page 2954 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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budget in this area. Normally Mr Smyth is at a volume and an octave considerably higher than he was this morning so it was very pleasurable to sit through his contribution this time as opposed to, say, at three in the morning when he is screaming at me like a banshee. But that is all right. It is a pleasant change.
I go firstly to the recommendations from the estimates committee in relation to tourism, sport and recreation. As members will see from the government’s response, we have agreed, agreed in principle or noted each the recommendations. I will just make one small observation around attention to detail in relation to recommendation 88 of the committee. They have got the wrong minister in relation to who should release Floriade data. It is the minister for tourism, not the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services who has responsibility there.
Whether that small error undermines the rest of the committee’s recommendations is a matter for judgement. I will take it as a slip-up, that what the committee meant was that the minister for tourism should release that data. We do, but it is important to note that it must be independently evaluated and audited and it will then be released. Given all the debates that we have had in relation to matters of audit in recent times, I am sure the Assembly would agree it is important that that information is independently audited and is reliable.
The budget in sport and recreation contains a number of key elements of Labor’s election platform, most particularly the funding for the new basketball centre and player amenities, the upgrades to Griffith oval, the upgrade to the Woden Gymnastics Club and further funding for the continuation of development of the Lyneham sports precinct, and it is in this context that I find Mr Rattenbury’s comments about long-term strategic plans interesting in that there has been a development of a master plan for that precinct. That goes back over a period of time. The development has been funded in stages, providing support for each of the tenants on that site, each of the sports that operate on that site.
We have provided not only capital works assistance for government-owned assets and infrastructure around that precinct but also direct cash grants to the sports themselves to enhance their facilities. The underlying principle there, and this is something that Mr Smyth and Mr Rattenbury would have heard me talk about during the course of last year’s election campaign, is around providing assistance to sports to help them generate their own revenue streams. But in the longer term we need our sports to be more sustainable and less reliant on government funding. There is not enough money for every sport in the territory to have all its operating costs met by either user fees or government funding. Sports must generate other sources of revenue.
This government believes that we can assist sport to achieve that through a variety of measures. In some instances it is around providing capital infrastructure grants that will then enable the sports to develop revenue streams. In other instances it relates to the zoning of land through the planning portfolio; for example, around how we can assist sports to be more viable in the long-term. But it is my longer-term vision that we see sports more able to stand on their own two feet and that they become less reliant over time on government funding, particularly those established sports that have parent bodies in this country that benefit significantly from, for example,
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