Page 1916 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005
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the inquest will be stopped in the Supreme Court? Is any of this expense going to be covered by insurance? Will another supplementary appropriation be needed for the coronial inquest?
As for the Eastman case, ditto, no funding is being allocated after 30 June. Your guess is as good as mine, but I think that that is a classic case of wishful thinking on the part of this government. Anything to do with that case over a decade or more would indicate that. When is the case going to end? How long is a piece of string? It has cost the territory a fortune and it is wishful thinking to think that, as of 30 June, it is going to come to a conclusion. I hope that the government will be right on that one, but I would not put my house on it.
The honest man’s conclusion could only be that the kitty is looking decidedly bare and the government is desperately looking at ways to cut back expenditure. But it can still find money for the usual rhetorical flourishes, the grandstanding and the political one-upmanship.
I turn to a couple of areas relating specifically to my electorate of Belconnen. I am pleased to see that the arts precinct is continuing. I am pleased to see that the consultation is going well there. That is an area in which the government seems to be doing its job quite well. I am disappointed that the needs of West Belconnen are not being attended to. For a couple of years, lots of people there have been wanting a skateboard park, which was in the 2001-02 budget for 2002-03 but, despite a lot of pressure on the government, their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. It looks like that facility will never be built by this government. I think that there is a real problem there.
I have no problems with the minister putting forward increases in gaming revenue in 2007. He anticipates extra revenue of over $5 million then. I think that might be wishful thinking. The club industry is doing it tough and the money from gaming revenue is going down. What will happen if the minister is wrong as there are perhaps fewer clubs in 2007 and the $5 million in revenue he is counting on simply does not materialise? You can’t get blood out of a stone.
In terms of sport, you can see the same cutting back in basic services, the same failure to address real needs. Take the issue of the sportsgrounds that have been starved of water over the last couple of years. Many—I think 30 is the latest figure—can no longer be used by children for sports because they are now unsafe and 28 of those would have to be brought back before they could be used at all. Is the government doing anything to address the issue? The government has allocated $1.2 million for its sportsground improvement program, but that does not address the most pressing issue of all, which is the lack of water for grounds. Whilst sportsgrounds around Canberra are unusable, or rapidly becoming so, all there is to be is an audit of irrigation systems.
I recommend to the minister for sport and his colleague the urban services minister that they listen to the experts. It is not rocket science. Even though we have a drought and we do not look like getting out of it for a while, you do not have to cut off 55 hectares of level 3 sportsgrounds. You can actually water them quite efficiently. You can go down the path of using grass such as couch and you can listen to experts, including the CSIRO, some of your own people and people such as Keith McIntyre, and manage to water these grounds and still have most of them basically usable. I commend that to you again.
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