Decade of broken promises to build new ice sports facility

26 August 2026

It has been 10 years today since the Australian Labor Party boldly declared “a re-elected ACT Labor government would help build a new ice sports facility in Canberra’s south”.

But as all Canberrans know too well, it’s a promise which has not been kept.

“ACT Labor is listening,” the nation’s capital was told on this very day a decade ago “and ACT Labor will work to deliver a new facility for Canberrans.”

“Construction will commence within the four year parliamentary term,” was another undertaking which has since been repeated at election campaigns in 2020 and 2024.

And still, Canberrans have no new promised ice sports facility.

No development application, no plans, no idea. Too many excuses, too many delays, too many hollow undertakings.

It’s time for ACT Labor, for Chief Minister Andrew Barr, for Sports Minister Chris Steel, for Deputy Chief Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith and for the bureaucrats at ACT Sport and Recreation to come clean on whether they're fair dinkum about their commitment to the ice sports.

On the government’s current track record, the public cannot be blamed for thinking its politicians are as slippery as wet ice, but unfortunately it’s not wet ice at the new arena the government committed to have built by 2020.