Page 1925 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005

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


I would also like to acknowledge the great work of Chris Grainger and the committee of the Gungahlin junior soccer club. I know they work to ensure that the children enjoy their matches every weekend, and I pay tribute to all the parents across Canberra who give their time for junior sport every weekend.

I know there have been some incidents over the weekend to do with football matches in Sydney between competing ethnic clubs. I would like to say that I think the Canberra football community will not have the same sorts of problems. I know that local supporters, whilst very passionate about the teams they support, can work together to promote a wonderful image of a successful and progressive sport.

I would also like to congratulate the Blue Devils club from Canberra for their win last night in the semi-finals of the continental knockout cup against the club from St George in Sydney. I understand the result of the match was three goals to one, and I hope that the Blue Devils will deliver a win in Australia’s largest knockout football competition when they play the finals shortly. I understand that Capital Football is seeking that the final match be played in Canberra and hope to attend the match should it be held here and enjoy the win by the Blue Devils in that competition.

Budget—acknowledgment to Treasury officers

MR QUINLAN (Molonglo—Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Business, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Sport and Recreation, and Minister for Racing and Gaming) (6.06): It is good to see that soccer is now represented in the Assembly.

I just want to take 30 seconds to register my gratitude and the gratitude of the government to the people in the Department of Treasury who worked on putting the budget together. Many of them have worked many long hours, over weekends, into the wee small hours of the morning. There will be somewhere in there a typo or two. I would ask, should members find them, that they do not necessarily make great sport of them. I think the service we get from Treasury has been tremendous and will continue to be so, I am sure.

Nuclear weapons

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (6.07): Who would think in this year, 2005, that the world would be worried again about nuclear weapons? It is not as though nuclear weapons disappeared—we know it is not possible for that to happen—but there was a sense that, with the end of the Soviet Union, perhaps we were going to get a peace dividend. All that has changed, of course, with the kind of new world order which was anticipated by George Bush senior and which has been carried further by the kind of polarisation that is occurring in the world at the moment due, I suppose, to taking the eye off the ball, especially in regard to international treaties which control, to some extent, the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

So it might be of interest to the house to know that this month, in New York, the United Nations began its five-yearly review conference of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,


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