Page 4912 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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Mr Rattenbury for his contribution. I think unfortunately, though, the sports minister showed just how out of touch he and his government are on this issue. He showed that on Friday in debating this and he has shown it again today. He says to the clubs, effectively, “You don’t know how good you’ve got it.” That is what he is saying to the clubs. “You’ve never had it so good,” says Mr Barr.
He says it is not an issue of their fees. Their fees are not an issue. When they come to him and say, “We have seen some of our fees go up 135 per cent and our fees represent sometimes up to a third of the cost of registration in things like junior soccer and junior rugby league,” Mr Barr says, “Don’t worry about that. You’ve never had it so good. You’re so heavily subsidised.”
If the government cannot deliver on local sporting facilities for year 8s, what are they delivering on? If this government cannot deliver ovals from people’s rates and the amount of taxes that they are being asked to pay, then you really do have to ask the question, “What are they here for?” He just does not get it. And we see that time and time again. That is why it is so important that we do take up these issues on behalf of all these local sporting clubs around the ACT who use these facilities and are seeing their fees go up. And they are seeing them go up significantly.
If the government were serious about delivering good local services to their community and about lowering costs, then instead of just criticising our policy what Mr Barr could do is adopt it. As he has in the past when he had no policies in education, he could adopt our policy here as well because it is a good policy. This time we have given him 12 months to copy our policy. He has got ample time. But if this government did not have such a focus on building office blocks that we do not need, then maybe they would be able to deliver for local communities on junior sport and on sporting facilities generally.
Imagine what they could have done in the last few years if they had not have wasted so much money on their cost blowouts. Imagine what kinds of sporting facilities they could have delivered. Let us take a couple of them. Imagine if they had not wasted that $5 million on FireLink that was never delivered. That $5 million would buy some pretty significant upgrades to local ovals and local sporting facilities. Imagine if they had not spent the $5 million on a busway that was never delivered. That is another $5 million that could have been ploughed into local issues like local sport. Imagine if they had not had the GDE debacle where, even on the most conservative estimates of the government, it cost us at least $20 million extra just from that decision to build one lane instead of two. The list goes on and on—the north-western ponds, the blowout in the ESA headquarters. Imagine if some of that had been invested back into junior sport. Imagine what kinds of facilities we would be seeing right across the ACT as a result of that.
But they have not. They have not managed to do the reforms. They have wasted our money. And that has consequences. It has consequences when you cannot manage your projects. It has consequences when you pursue legacy projects like the $430 million government office block. We have seen the government waste lots of money and not invest as they should. Now we see them proposing to waste a hell of a lot more money going forward.
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