Page 2671 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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16 per cent cost recovery is significantly below the 20 per cent benchmark generally applied in other jurisdictions; and
(d) the challenges for sportsground maintenance presented by climatic conditions in the ACT; and
(2) calls on the Government to:
(a) continue to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the current approach to sportsground bookings and maintenance; and
(b) work actively with local sporting clubs around awareness and planning for scheduled ground closures.”.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.40): I will be speaking in support of Minister Berry’s amendment. I thank her for providing that clarity. She has made a number of interesting points, and I will speak to a few of those in my comments today. As Minister Berry has stated, and I know myself from my time with Sport and Recreation Services, the community quite rightly has high expectations of the quality of ACT government-managed sportsgrounds. Equally, I know that Active Canberra work hard to ensure that all sportsgrounds are safe and fit for purpose for the thousands of Canberrans who are out training or competing nearly every day of the year in every season in an extraordinary array of sporting activities.
There are quite a lot of sportsgrounds and spaces across the territory. There are 280 hectares of irrigated sportsgrounds spread out over 124 different sports and recreation sportsgrounds and 884 individual fields. These grounds cater for a wide range of organised sports but are also a place to kick the footy around, throw a frisbee with your family or walk the dog. That underlines the fact that the vast majority of ACT government sportsgrounds are open to the community and the elements most of the year. They are many things to many people, including those who practice golf on them and whack holes in the grass, and all the other things that happen on our sportsgrounds.
We need to recognise the true costs of providing these facilities and also manage our sportsgrounds in line with community expectations of performance and accessibility. I know that Mr Doszpot spends enough time out at sporting events to understand that some of the issues that see these grounds closed are in fact desirable or otherwise unavoidable and out of the hands of government. Certainly Ms Berry in her remarks has highlighted some of the recent weather events. Between the weather events and the necessary maintenance, it is necessary at times to close these grounds to keep them safe and fit for purpose.
Obviously at times this causes inconvenience for some. I have been impacted by it myself at times, wanting to use an oval that is necessarily closed. The observation around continuing to work with community organisations to improve awareness of that and to explain the necessity of it is an important point that Mr Doszpot has picked up and it has been reflected in Ms Berry’s amendment. There is no doubt room for ongoing efforts to improve communication, particularly as people change over. Volunteers change in organisations and it is incumbent on government to continue to explain both the necessity of that and to ensure that there is plenty and good warning
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