Page 2664 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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Why has the directorate budget been cut and why have the costs of ground hire gone up so much? It has become a common story for a number of local clubs all over Canberra that the most significant part of their budget is the amount spent on ground hire. Over the past four years clubs have seen these costs have real consequences on the way they impact on their budgets and over the past 12 months I have had the opportunity to talk to many clubs about their major issues and priorities.
One club in particular gave me a very graphic example of the cost of ground hire. This particular club has had the cost of its ground hire rise from $15,000 in 2013 to almost $35,000 in 2015, an increase of $20,000 in just two years. Why? Was there additional lighting installed for the club? Were facilities upgraded? What changed? Nothing changed for that club. There was no improvement to the lighting; the facilities were not upgraded. The only thing that changed was the exorbitant cost that has gone from $15,000 to $35,000 in just two years. Of course these costs then are passed, inevitably, onto the parents and participants at the club. It is just another example of how this government is constantly increasing the cost of living for Canberrans.
However, whilst these increases in cost are forced onto local clubs year after year they are consistently forced to play on substandard facilities. It is not as if the increases mean that there are more facility repairs and better sporting grounds made available. The facilities, the sporting grounds, are becoming substandard.
This same club told me the story of their local oval, which had always had exposed sprinkler heads that were never fixed and which had drainage which meant that water would always pool any time it rained. This of course meant that after rain the ground turned to sludge, meaning the ground became unplayable, sometimes for quite a while. Add to this the total lack of parking in the area and it adds up to a less than great experience, all at the cost of an extra $20,000 for the two years. This is not an uncommon experience among sports clubs. With the recent constant closure of sportsgrounds this year, I had a number of people mention that it was as though any sign of rain meant the oval should be closed.
The official line from government is that the grounds need to be closed to protect the playing surface—and that is correct—but why is the playing surface unable to drain sufficiently when, just across the border, either to the north or the south, local council facilities manage to get the surface drainage correct and they can allow most games to proceed up to significant and continuing wet weather events? In Canberra closure is a certainty because of the risk of disrepair and breakdown in services for every ground even after just one session of rain.
How unsurprisingly, if you ask this government if their management plan for sporting facilities in Canberra is working and the best and most effective they can be, then you are accused of constantly talking down Canberra’s sporting facilities. While various ministers in this Labor-Greens alliance continue to stick their heads in the sand I will continue to stand up for the local community sporting clubs and their volunteers, who are the backbone of every junior and senior club in Canberra and whose requests for the government to listen to their very real issues are falling on deaf ears within this government.
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