Page 3485 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 September 2019
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It is another great opportunity to talk about the sporting prowess that the ACT government invests in and that Stromlo Forest Park has to offer. And now we have a pool and a gym coming online. Isn’t that fantastic for our local community? The leisure centre will include an eight-lane, 50-metre pool with movable boom to allow for short-course lap swimming, as well as water polo, canoe polo and underwater hockey competitions. I will also be using it for triathlon training, which I am pretty excited about.
The centre will have a 20-metre warm water pool for learn-to-swim and other aquatic programs. Yes, Mrs Dunne—a warm-water pool. It will have a leisure pool with a toddlers pool, with beach entry for wheelchair access, a disability pool hoist for raising and lowering the mobility impaired into all of the pools, a gym, a cafe, wet change rooms to service the pool areas and dry change rooms to service the gym areas. It will have multiple dedicated family change spaces. There will be seating for 500 people, which will allow community sport and recreation groups to host state-level competitions and swimming carnivals. There will also be a splash park, which has proved to be great fun for lots of young people out at Tuggeranong pool. In fact, after some of our triathlon practice sessions, we use it too—the big kids.
This will be an amazing asset for my local community, because that is what Labor governments deliver: public assets. I am not sure if the opposition’s sudden interest in this asset is because they have found a buyer and want to privatise it to cover their reckless taxation policies.
Mr Assistant Speaker, whilst that might be part of their secret privatisation agenda, I can tell you more about the government’s strong agenda for sporting and recreational spaces in my electorate. Some of it has already been delivered. The work at Football Park in Phillip has both made that facility inclusive of female players and improved the amenity for everyone. I note that some junior AFL football finals were held there this weekend, for both boys and girls, and lots of people—there were lots of people there.
Mrs Jones: Attended.
MS CODY: Attended; thank you, Mrs Jones. Ms Berry has also been working hard to develop the next steps for sport in the Molonglo Valley. Planning and consultation are underway for district playing fields. This will mean not only that my community will have better access to sport and recreation areas, but also that other communities will have access to them.
As has been noted by a few speakers here today, Stromlo Forest Park is very central for the Canberra region: 10 to 15 minutes to the city, 10 to 15 minutes to the depths of Tuggeranong, maybe 20 to 25 minutes to those places over in Gungahlin that I tend not to go to, because I love my Molonglo Valley and my Murrumbidgee electorate. There will also be a new pavilion that will be modern and appropriate having regard to the diversity of the people who are now playing sport.
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