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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 3513 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Tuggeranong Valley Fishing Club, Canberra Model Yacht Club through Vice-Commodore Alan Edwards, Tuggeranong Vikings Cycling Club, Tuggeranong Vikings Women's Lawn Bowls Club, Guises Creek Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade, of which Mr Smyth is a member, the Australian Federal Police at Tuggeranong, always a big supporter, Kambah Old Boys Soccer Club, the Tuggeranong Youth Resources Centre, Country Music Association, Vikings Social Tennis Club, the Women's Neighbourhood Group, Pines Tennis Club, Tenants Union, Lions Club of Lanyon, Burns Heritage Club, the ACT Hepatitis Council, the Australia Nepal Friendship Group, SIDS and Kids, Tuggeranong Scouts, and the Australia Sri Lanka Association.

I will outline the range of activities put on by the festival to demonstrate that it is a multifaceted festival. It is not like Floriade, the Canberra Festival or the Multicultural Festival, which are single-issue celebrations that have their own place. It should be noted, of course, that they are significantly supported in cash by the ACT government and sponsors and I would suggest that the crowds that they attract, if you take the proportionality in terms of the amount of support they get from government, are such that you would probably find that the value for the dollar is better at Tuggeranong than at some of the wider ones.

The committee members who brought off the festival deserve special mention. They have been doing so for a long time. My first involvement was back in, I think, 1991 and a lot of the people I am about to mention have been involved it in for a number of years. The president of the committee is Michael Lindfield, who has been president for the last couple of years. It was Michael who had the vision to reduce the festival to a couple of days and to change the format slightly. Rod Fishwick, the vice-president, and his wife, Andy, were responsible for getting Mental As Anything and providing all the technical support. There are some brilliant people living and working in the community. Danni Turner is the secretary and Michael Crozier OAM is the treasurer. The committee has Jill Faulkner, Charles Ironside, Dien Tran, Leeanne Martin, Julie Chong, Ben French, Bruce Goleby, Frank Pompeani and Phil Nobal as its members.

Most people around here do not know any of those people. They are the unsung people behind the festival and I think that it is reasonable to bring them into the limelight very briefly every now and again. I am very pleased to be able to do that. I know that Mr Smyth, a former patron of the festival, actually knows the amount of work that the committee goes through for little or no recognition. I am absolutely certain that he will join me in congratulating them for their work.

Mr Speaker, I talked earlier about the festival being multifaceted. It always had the intention of providing for a range of activities. Sometimes that has worked to its detriment in terms of being able to acquire financial support from the government of the day because the bureaucratic mindset behind the provision of this sort of support has always been suffering from rampant tunnel vision and the bureaucrats concerned have not been able to think of two things at the same time.

I am suggesting now that the success of this festival demonstrates that they have to think outside the square, they have to start being a bit more imaginative. I challenge Ross MacDiarmid from the CTEC organisation to go there and see the sort of festival that we can run without big bells and whistles, consider the success of this sort of thing and fold it into his mindset for the promotion of Canberra. If we can bring people from

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