Page 1020 - Week 04 - Thursday, 18 June 1992
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MR DE DOMENICO: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Mr Conway, who purports to be the assistant secretary of the Office of Sport, is quoted as follows:
"If they want the Government to take sport seriously, they must make submissions on an on-going basis," Conway said.
Can the Minister confirm, in fact, that it is the Government's policy that unless any group in our community makes constant submissions it will not be taken seriously?
MR BERRY: I thank the member for his supplementary question, and I will answer it concisely. The Government will always take sport seriously.
Bruce Stadium - Corporate Boxes
MR MOORE: I believe that my question is directed to Mr Connolly. I hope that he does not, in turn, pass it on to Mr Berry; but, if he needs to, he must. It is about corporate boxes. I wonder why it is that ACTTAB and Canberra Milk have corporate boxes where I understand they provide guests with free drinks - not necessarily milk - at Canberra Raiders games. What benefits and costs does this have for the ACT community?
MR CONNOLLY: I will have to refer the question in relation to ACTTAB to my colleague Mr Berry, who I am sure will give a concise answer. But I am, in fact, in a position to give an answer in relation to Canberra Milk, because I know that the Liberal Party have been sniffing around on this issue in the last few days and have perhaps passed their ammunition across the chamber. I am able to produce and table a graph, which unfortunately is not in colour or large, so the Liberals may not find it as digestible as the one I had the other day for electricity prices. It shows our baseline and the percentage increase in our sales. The graph is fairly flat, declines and is again flat.
Since we started the Canberra Raiders sponsorship, the graph has gone fairly consistently upwards. That takes us up to the end of 1991. Canberra Milk is a sponsor of the Canberra Raiders, as members would be aware. It started the sponsorship in late 1989. The sponsorship is part of its marketing expenditure. Its total marketing expenditure, of which only a part is the sponsorship, runs to about half a million dollars. The decision by the Milk Authority to spend money on marketing is, of course, a commercial decision. The Liberals are always telling us about making commercial decisions and all the rest of it. The commercial decision, in terms of growth of milk sales, seems quite remarkable. The result of that, of course, is that we are able, through the Milk Authority, to put milk on the consumer's table in Canberra at something like 10c a litre cheaper than the price across the border in Queanbeyan. It is sensible to spend money wisely on marketing.
As part of the sponsorship package for the Raiders, the Milk Authority gets a corporate box in which it entertains people. I occasionally go out there for a Raiders game. Some of their principal clients - the wholesalers and operators of major retail chains, or some of the suppliers - are always there. As part of the
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