Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 3 Hansard (25 March) . . Page.. 879 ..

MR QUINLAN: I am getting to that. Having modelled himself on Bob Hawke's "How're you going?" success, Mr Howard would have us believe now that he is a little Aussie battler and he knows about Aussie mateship. If he does, I would be very surprised. Mrs Carnell is the No. 1 fan of almost everything in Canberra, publicly so, and regularly excited. I noticed the use today of the term, "the chalice of optimism". I mention that because I wanted to stick it in my speech somewhere, having heard it. "The chalice of optimism". I like that; that is a good one. Being the No. 1 fan of just about every sporting team in Canberra is not altogether a bad thing. If it helps to promote the sport and bring in general support for our teams' efforts in whatever, so be it. It ought to be kept in perspective, though. I have to say that I am the sort of bloke who does not mind a good knees-up every now and then - the odd party, the odd event, the odd place to go - and I do believe that we in Canberra benefit from many of the events that we have.

As predicted by Mr Stefaniak, I could not go through the speech without mentioning the futsal stadium. I will just refer to the fact that I think the last thing that happened on it was a circus, which punched holes in it. As we have EPIC anyway, we may as well put car park lines on it, because it is a bit crazy to have an outdoor stadium for an indoor sport. We have had a circus on it, but we should not reduce government to bread and circuses - excuse the pun.

It is a little dangerous to challenge subjects that get close to motherhood and I know that the Government is well armed with press release novelists who can very quickly put words in your mouth and exaggerate what you say; but, what the hell, I will walk on the wild side a little. In 1998 I attended many of the events of the National Multicultural Festival. I have to observe that some of it was very interesting, some of it suffered a little on the entertainment value index and a lot of it was not well attended, unfortunately or not. But, on the positive side, it did abound with photo opportunities for the Chief Minister.

Over many years before that I had attended the Canberra Festival and I found it to be consistently a good festival. I very much hope that the Canberra Festival and the National Multicultural Festival, combined or separate, both succeed. But I think the jury is still out after the 1999 combined festival as to whether we have gained or we have lost and allowed the city's birthday celebration to be subsumed into another festival, which I think would be a shame. From what I have seen this year of the National Multicultural Festival, festivale or whatever you like to call it, I think it is a good and a positive thing that might benefit from being condensed somewhat so that we get more the essence of it, rather than having poor ethnic groups hanging around in Garema Place with not a lot else there than a few of their own supporters.

At this point I am presuming that towards the end of this debate the Chief Minister will speak and there will be some announcement or some reason why we have had this MPI, which does not seem to be contributing much other than filling in the Government's time and the Government's agenda. We talk about the benefits of conducting festivals and events. A lot of people are doing a lot of work on them. If you go to Sports House you

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .