Page 2353 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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When we look at some of these fees, it is currently $5 an hour for junior sports to hire an oval, and for an entire team for an hour the individual contribution, I think, is quite low. We do need to try and carefully find that balance between making sure that we get the revenue to keep those facilities up to a higher standard and ensuring that access to support remains affordable for families across the city.
I am intrigued, coming new to the portfolio, by the discussion about beach volleyball. It is unclear to me—again, this might be a conversation I need to have with Mr Doszpot offline—why Mr Doszpot picked that up as an objectionable sports facility. I actually agree with Mr Doszpot’s comments about how we need to make sure that some of the less mainstream sports also get access to resources and get a moment in the sunshine, so to speak, in terms of support from government. I think that is quite true.
There is a dominance of particular football codes in the way money is disbursed. We need to look right across all sports because we need people to be involved in sport and recreation. For some people that is not going to be some of the more traditional sports, so it is important to make sure that there are good facilities and a good recognition of some new and emerging sports or just less mainstream sports.
So I am interested in the argument around beach volleyball, and I have looked at this information since taking on the portfolio. There is a good, healthy number of people enrolled in beach volleyball clubs in the ACT. The sport came to the government, seeking to upgrade their facilities. There was an opportunity to move forward there, and the government has co-invested with the volleyball association here in the territory. That is one of those less mainstream sports the government has actually got behind. I am more than happy to have a further discussion about why that one is perhaps seemingly less meritorious than some of the other less mainstream sports.
I certainly agree that we need to do a lot of work on our lakes to ensure that they remain available as a sports facility and, for that matter, a recreation facility. The lakes provide a huge number of opportunities for a huge number of people. The state of the lakes has been a source of considerable frustration for me, as members will know, for quite a few years. I am very pleased with the Assembly’s support of my original motion back in 2011 to have the commissioner for the environment look at the state of the lakes and to provide a good, clear pathway forward.
We have now got the money from the commonwealth to help us support the ACT in making considerable investments in improving the quality of our waterways. I think we need to be honest with ourselves, though. I am not sure that there is a quick fix for the lakes. The pollution problem in the lakes has built up over quite a few decades. The nutrient loadings in the lake are significant. Some scientists, some experts in this area, will say that we have a bit of a tipping point where the level of nutrients is such now that we are at a place where the blue-green algae can actually trigger very easily, or very readily, because of the level of nutrients in the lake, so it is going to take some time to turn that around.
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