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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3127 ..
MRS CARNELL (continuing):
We are only a few hours from Sydney. We will be marketing this city, even though those opposite obviously cannot accept that Canberra can do something very well. As we have heard, the potential ticket sales alone for Canberra are around $3m, if we fill the seats, and we believe we can. The remaining revenue streams potentially bring an additional $1m, and that is without all of the flow-ons from this. The underwriting of the tickets is something that is in all of the contracts, as I understand it, with all of the cities that have signed to have Olympic soccer.
I believe strongly that Canberra wants to be an Olympic city. Certainly, this side of the house believes that is important. This was part of the deal. I have faith that we can do that. The total exposure, as Mr Whitecross says, is $5.286m if not one person turns up for ticket sales. Does Mr Whitecross think no-one is going to turn up? I believe strongly that we can fill more than 60 per cent of the seats for Olympic soccer in Canberra. The Brumbies matches this year had that many people, and even the finals of the soccer locally this year, I think, got somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. You are starting to see some real interest in soccer in this city. If we took the approach that those opposite do, we would never aspire to anything. We would never go out after any deal. We would sit on our hands and vegetate. We will not do that. Obviously, those opposite would.
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, my question is to Mr Stefaniak, as Minister for Education. Minister, I refer to a questionnaire conducted by the Australian Education Union with reference to information technology. I presume that you do not share the opinion of your colleague, the other Liberal member for Ginninderra, who seems to think that schools have plenty of computers. I would be interested to hear whether you do. More importantly, question 7 of their survey asks, "Approximately how many hours of training in the use of information technology has your employer provided you with in the past year?". The results were: None, 48 per cent; one to five hours, another 39 per cent; and then some small figures. Minister, do you consider that this level of training in information technology provided for teachers in your service is adequate and, if not, what are you going to do about it?
MR STEFANIAK: I thank Mr Moore for the question. As Mr Moore is aware, we are coming up to an election. Parties are formulating policies, and you will probably hear a little bit more from us in relation to this when that is done. Perhaps, though, in relation to training - - -
Mr Moore: I want to know what you as Minister are doing.
MR STEFANIAK: Might I tell you what has occurred and the improvements that have been made - and will continue to be made - over the last 18 months? There have been some significant improvements since 1993 in this area. Specifically, over the last 18 months, in excess of 1,600 staff have undertaken information technology training.
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