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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2107 ..

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (4.27): I rise to respond to the deep interest shown by the Minister for Tourism in Labor's policies on tourism, an interest that I know mirrors the interest shown earlier in the week by the Chief Minister in relation to the same matter and the avid way that the Government have been hitting our home page at least once or twice a day in order to discover what our policies are. I have noted their disappointment when they have hit on our home page and have not actually discovered our policies there. They seem to be reading something amazing into this, so I thought I should clarify for the Minister's benefit that only 10 days ago we had a conference where we completely rewrote our platform. Amendments were moved and the whole new platform has to be collated.

The Government, like other avid users of the Internet, will have to wait until the finalised version of the policy is collated after taking account of amendments moved at the conference, in order to discover what Labor's platform is for the next election. Of course, the platform will form the basis on which we will formulate policy in relation to tourism and other areas at the next election. I can only encourage the Minister in his spare time to keep hitting on the Labor Party home page, because he might learn something there in due course. He will eventually be thrilled, I am sure, to see Labor's new platform loaded onto the home page.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Proposed expenditure - Arts and Heritage, $14,244,600 (comprising net cost of outputs, $6,942,100; and payments on behalf of Territory, $7,302,500) - agreed to.

Proposed expenditure - Sport, Recreation and Racing, $16,355,900 (comprising net cost of outputs, $8,967,900; and payments on behalf of Territory, $7,388,000)

MS McRAE (4.30): This is a curious line of the budget because when you add it all up there is very little to do with sport and recreation and an awful lot to do with administration and management of facilities and quite a lot of capital works and general public works. It is really a quite curious mixture of responsibilities that fall in the sporting area. By and large, the way it has fallen out with the four different areas - the ministerial advisory and policy area; the maintenance and delivery of sporting facilities, including the conduct of programs; the administration of grants; and the regulatory activity - is pretty well a continuation over the past couple of years of everything that Labor put in train. It continues the grants program, Sports House and facilities. Project 2000 has now been moved, and the 10-year plan for facilities is pretty much a continuation of things as we would have liked to see them.

We then have to look at the detail to find out what this is really all for. What do we really want out of the Bureau of Sport, Recreation and Racing? What is the good of it to the ACT? What is this Government doing that is worthy of praise or worthy of criticism? On closer examination, it becomes a quite interesting area. For me, it epitomises one of the problems that we have with the budget papers. I guess it is partly because we are dealing with them in the vacuum of not having the annual reports. This is something

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