The Australian Institute of Sport has emerged too late in the piece over the question of the route for the Gungahlin Drive extension. After years of debate and an ACT election in which the question played a prominent part, the institute only now raises its head to object to the western route. And only then because it was asked about it in estimates committee in Federal Parliament.
It was made quite clear by Labor in the election campaign that if it came to power it would not put the road through O’Connor Ridge and that it would go via the western option.
Now the institute says that the western option will be “”a disaster for the AIS”. It is hyperbole and exaggeration. Plenty of sports facilities in other parts of Australia and the world are placed closer to roads carrying higher volumes of traffic than expected by the Gungahlin Drive extension. In any event the eastern option would go almost as close to some sports facilities on the other side of the AIS-Canberra Stadium sports area. There may be some inconvenience for people who work in the area both during construction and afterwards if some existing carparks are consumed and not replaced, but compared to the destruction of O’Connor Ridge, taking the road west is a much better option.
The head of the Australian Sports Commission (which administers the institute), Mark Peters, told the committee this week that the AIS had not put its concerns publicly, or even to the Federal MPs because “”we chose not to go into a political bloodbath before an election”. That was a poor choice. The debate about the road was a major election issue. It was imperative for the proponents of all options to have their say publicly or in formal confidential statements to political contenders of major parties, minor parties and independents both at the ACT and Federal level.
What did the AIS expect? Did it seriously imagine that an ACT election could be fought, positions cemented in and commitments given and that afterwards it could politely ask the Federal Government to do its bidding?
If the AIS imagined that it could stay out of the political bloodbath, it was naïve. It might have stayed out of the political bloodbath before the ACT and Federal elections, but it is certainly in one now. To mix metaphors further, it has made itself a political football – it is now ensnared in a political fight between its Minister, Senator Rod Kemp, and Labor’s sports spokeswoman, Senator Kate Lundy. Senator Lundy expressed fears that the road might become part of what she labelled the Federal Government’s agenda to decentralise the AIS out of existence. Senator Kemp has asserted that the biggest risk to the AIS’s future is the ACT (Labor) Government. That assertion somewhat verifies Senator Lundy’s fears – though it is hard to imagine the Federal Government dismantling the AIS simply because the ACT Government builds a freeway near it, unless the AIS overplays its hand by exaggerating the effect of the road to the extent that people start believing that the AIS cannot function if the road takes the western route.
A better course for the AIS now would be to accept that having remained silent during the main debate it cannot undo electoral promises so it is now locked in to the western route. Rather than argue the route, it should negotiate the best deal it can on noise abatement and other consequences of the road. Moreover, it should capitalise on the fact that without the freeway on the eastern side, it can look that way for access to land for training and other uses.