Page 2626 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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We are seeing an increase in participation across a number of sports in the ACT. Most of the football codes are struggling to keep up with the growth in all of their areas. I know in football it is an exceedingly sore area, as there are more and more competitors coming in across the various sectors, yet there are fewer grounds for them to compete on, and the many grounds that have been taken offline still have not been brought back online. So there is a shortage of grounds, and we will cover this in more detail later.
We are starting to see that many sports are not only having problems with the current facilities that are available but also they are finding it very hard to plan for future activities and developments because of the lack availability of other facilities. We see increases in participation in local sports. Particularly in junior sports, as I mentioned, our facilities are already being used to their capacity. Many of these facilities are under pressure as sporting bodies look to find more space for their sporting competitions, and obviously for training sessions as well. They are all having a very heavy usage rate and most of our grounds are being overtaxed. As each of these is used more and more, the quality of these facilities decreases and the strain of overuse takes its toll. Sporting teams in the ACT deserve facilities that are of a high quality, especially when you factor in the rising costs of facility hire.
You can understand the expectations of sporting clubs. They want good quality, well-maintained facilities. When you look at the nature of the rising costs involved in hiring government-managed facilities, it is much like the fast-rising cost of rates in the ACT—the sporting community is also paying more and getting less.
On a similar note, it is important in the ACT that we see good management of our top-flight sporting facilities—facilities such as the Gungahlin enclosed oval, which hosted its first FFA Cup tie last week—and other venues such as Woden park and Narrabundah ballpark. All of them host matches or competitions at high levels, and all have problems with turf, visitor facilities, spectator facilities or parking.
On a positive note, I attended last week the FFA Cup tie at Gungahlin oval for a match between Gungahlin and Sydney Olympic, and was pleased to see that the facility was well prepared for such an event, with a covered grandstand that seated, I believe, close to a thousand people, as well as providing a great view of the game. It also had reasonable amenities—a media box, toilets, canteen facilities, reasonable lighting and a scoreboard—all for around $4 million.
Contrast this with the problems that we have seen develop at Woden park. There seems to have been issue after issue at Woden park. These include issues such as the turf, management of the turf and sustainability. We saw the surface quality deteriorate rapidly after just a handful of matches, and we can then throw in the lack of seating and parking for spectators, which are very limited. This government has built a $7 million athletics facility while overlooking a number of essential requirements—and I will note the number of requirements that I believe are just not good enough under any circumstances, and certainly not good enough for a facility on which we have spent over $7 million.
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