Page 2916 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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leadership”. Here is a perfect example of one community group that is totally disadvantaged. If we apply the rules, your own strategic rules, there should be more information given to these people so that they can act together to facilitate both sports. That would also come under “Ensure coordination between the portfolios of tourism, education, planning, sport and recreation”. Furthermore, the success indicators would be met: “More multi-use facilities providing efficiencies in accessibility and management” and “Greater sharing of resources providing efficiencies in program delivery”.
That is in the glossy brochure. When we come down to the actual practicality of putting this in place, we have a very different situation. What the Lanyon football club got was a one-line response to a fairly detailed submission from them: “Not available; this is for use by the athletics club only.” When we brought this up in estimates, you told us that there is no such policy. Minister, even the comments that you give back to us now seem to verify exactly what the club was told in the first instance.
Yet, as we just said, there are other ways of looking at these problems. Given that long-jump pits and the like are normally built on the edge of an oval, surely there could have been some accommodation for a soccer field to be placed there—for a football field to be placed there in a position where that could be taken advantage of without inhibiting use by the current sole user, athletics. I remain to be convinced that there is not a sensible compromise available. Also, I note the offhand response again from the department by a third party and the lack of consultation, once again, with local clubs—putting them in discussion together to see how this could be arrived at.
To highlight the anomaly of a single-use oval for only 175 hours per year, let me go to other ovals in the region. Ovals such as Gowrie already have nearly 3,000 hours of usage and Calwell ovals are similarly booked. Calwell’s three ovals are booked for 4,862 hours per year. So we are getting lots of usage in some areas, and then we have got an area that is lying absolutely useless—not useless, but not used in the winter months, and in summer months used for only 175 hours per year. It is quite interesting.
We have some serious overuse issues in the territory, as we have just said, and we have some sports that have very high participation rates. Football is played for nearly 31,000 hours a year, Rugby League for 6,000 hours, softball for over 4,000 hours, Australian Rules for over 5,200 hours and cricket for over 8,000 hours. These are local games involving local teams and thousands of families. And let us not forget the thousands of hours of netball and basketball also played in indoor commercial facilities and the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of sport played on school grounds—yes, minister: some even in non-government school grounds.
Despite the numerous and all-important local issues, the minister only wants to focus on upgrades for Canberra Stadium and Manuka Oval, attracting matches such as Sheffield Shield matches to Canberra. And while it is important that we continue to invest in sporting infrastructure to attract major games, it is a hallmark of this government and this minister that they avoid close scrutiny and ignore the nuts and bolts, the grassroots issues of our local communities. Instead they fly media-grabbing kites such as presidential palaces for $432 million and a roof for the Canberra Stadium. In place of hard yards policy detail, they distribute glossy brochures—fantastic glossy brochures outlining in colourful marketing-speak, Barr-speak,
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