Page 2668 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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club support or maintenance. None of those cuts has incurred. Perhaps Mr Doszpot needs to look through his papers or maybe give Mr Smyth a call to find the response that I gave to that question to give him some more detail.
Some of the funding for the Brumbies was transferred from the Sport and Recreation portfolio to the Chief Minister’s directorate, as well as funding for the Capitals. I suggest that Mr Doszpot checks that out instead of coming in here, taking bits and pieces, quoting them and trying to mislead people. I guess that is the way the Canberra Liberals work; they just quote bits and pieces at a time without providing the full information to the community.
What we can all agree on is that sport and recreation is at the heart of our community. It deserves, and can rightly demand, a strong commitment from our government. The funding needs of sport and recreation are diverse, with costs that range from training athletes—currently doing us proud in Rio, which you mentioned earlier, Madam Deputy Speaker—to delivering critical operational funding support to our sporting organisations, to encouraging children to connect with outdoor play through nature play, through to maintaining and overseeing our sportsground and aquatic facilities.
The annual cost of all of this is significant and varies each budget year with the comings and goings of capital developments as well as new initiatives. The cost that we are talking about here is in the order of a recurrent payment of $25.122 million. The variation on the 2015-16 payments is explained by a number of output movements and the completion of some initiatives, which I provided on notice after the estimates and have just suggested that Mr Doszpot check out.
Community attention often draws back to our sportsgrounds, the repair and maintenance of them and their availability for local clubs. I would remind the Assembly that the ACT government manages and maintains over 442 hectares. Of this, we irrigate 287 hectares, comprising 711 individual hireable fields for the Canberra community. Active Canberra administered 86,723 hours of sportsground bookings in 2015-16. Twenty-one full-time staff bring this service together.
Delivering this service is not without its challenges. Our Canberra climate presents the toughest turf management conditions in the country: scorching heat in summer and an average of 99 frosts each winter. Weather conditions in Canberra this winter have been particularly challenging for turf maintenance. The month of June was the wettest on record, with 144 millimetres of rain, representing more than three times the average rainfall for the month. A further 71 millimetres of rain—almost double the monthly average—fell in July.
In the interest of safety and to minimise surface damage, sportsground closures have been necessary across the region—not just in Canberra—to assist in preserving the conditions of the playing surfaces. I have been to see the Gungahlin enclosed oval and am aware of the pressures on the high use of this ground. Despite these challenges, Active Canberra has continued to work closely with sporting representatives to assist in the delivery of their respective training and competition needs. Madam Deputy Speaker, I can assure you and I can assure the Assembly that, whatever the challenges are, you will not find this government painting the grass to keep it green.
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