Page 1634 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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have broken has now proven to be incredibly short-sighted. Canberrans were quite accepting of level 2 restrictions. We adapted very quickly. Canberrans are very good at that sort of thing. They have proven it with recycling and collecting their waste paper in separate bins and in many other initiatives to help the environment.
Now we are about to pay a very grim dividend. It is quite clear that there is the early onset of obesity, particularly in childhood. There are some enormously long-term consequences in an extraordinary growth in the number of cancers that people acquire. Type 2 diabetes is another problem. And getting the kids back out of their bedrooms, with their electronic gizmos, is much harder once they have broken that cycle. Chief Minister, if you have the surplus that you claim you have, I urge you to reconsider the decision to stop watering the ovals. It is incredibly short-sighted.
It will also cost you long-term. To revive these ovals is something like $10,000 a hectare at a minimum. Given the premium that we place on people with certain skills—and this will involve horticulturalists, plumbers, greenkeepers and all sorts of folk who will get involved in this process—it may go as high as $15,000 or $20,000 a hectare, simply because labour will be at a peak when, two, three or four years from now, we attempt to bring these ovals back. If you are talking about 200 hectares at $20,000 a hectare, that is not an insignificant amount of money. At the same time, it will have damaged those industries—our sporting groups, and they are an industry.
Without having your own oval operating where you have a canteen and where you collect revenue to pay for new equipment and minimise the fees for juniors to play sport, we are going to damage those clubs. That may also put an impost back on the government. Chief Minister, if you do have the surplus that you say you have, and you do appreciate the value of sport, the ovals and the community, I would urge you to do this. Eighty per cent of the facility managers were told today that their ovals are at risk, and that is a dreadful thing.
I know that we have all got our fingers crossed that the drought will break. The Leader of the Opposition has called this the “cross your fingers budget”. But quite clearly, for a small amount of money to truck water, please follow the initiative that the Bracks government has put in place for both metropolitan and rural Victoria, and allow our sporting groups to survive. You said it was free; you said that there is plenty of water at the bottom end of the lower Molonglo. Let us get some of that water back where it belongs. A problem with that is, I understand, that it is so steep that when the trucks get to the bottom of the hill they cannot take on a full load of water. I understand that there is discussion about running a pipe to the top of the incline. That would be useful as well. But if some money were to become available, that would be a useful thing.
All that said, water legislation must be updated. The opposition accept that. We will be supporting this bill. But, Chief Minister, we look for some proactivity from you on the issue of ovals.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (8.17), in reply: Mr Speaker, I rise to close the debate. As members have acknowledged during their
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