Page 918 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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to the work of the artistic director, Mr Ian McLean, my own senior staff member Mr Clinton White, who has organised this concert, along with the generous community support from the Canberra Theatre, Zoo, ActewAGL, Channelvision and Canprint. I also pay tribute to all of the people who are performing at the concert: the band of the Royal Military College Duntroon, the Blamey Street Big Band and a range of other artists including Annie and the Armadillos, Franklyn B Paverty, Leisa Keen, Rachel Thorne, Tony Haley, TAPistry, the Legs dancing studio, Stephen Pike, the Canberra Philharmonic Society and the cast of Mikado. All of those people are giving generously of their time, giving freely of their time, in the hope of raising substantial amounts of money.
I commend the show at 7.30 pm on Thursday, 26 February to all members here, in the hope that they can attend and that they will commend it to their friends as well. It would be unfortunate if we ended up sitting late because we could not organise our business and if members here were not be able to attend as we had planned to do.
All in all, this is an important motion. It is important that we pay tribute to the generosity of the people of the ACT—generosity given by volunteering time and money, giving up substantially, and the generosity of the people of the ACT who allow their loved ones to go away. As has tragically happened in this circumstance, one person has given up his life for his fellow Australians, and we should mark that with great respect.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.43): I thank Mr Corbell for moving this motion and we are very happy to support all of the sentiments in the motion.
We in Canberra in various ways have experienced bushfire, particularly in 2003. Most of us would remember that day still very vividly—the horror of that day in many ways and the difficulty of that day but also, of course, the great courage of so many in our community who fought the fires and the great generosity of many in our community and from around Australia who lent a hand both during the fire emergency and after in the recovery process. Canberrans in a particular way have felt the desire to repay some of that in the wake of this devastating bushfire emergency and tragedy in Victoria and have responded in a very generous way.
We note the efforts of our emergency services and police but also the volunteers and all in the community who have donated their time and their money to help in the recovery process. We know that is going on around Australia but we pay particular tribute to the contribution made by Canberrans. We do have some understanding of bushfires. Whilst we, I suppose, look back now and feel that we were in many ways lucky that we did not experience far greater devastation, given what has gone on in Victoria, ours was still a massive fire event. We lost four lives and 500 homes and we will never forget that.
It is worth paying tribute to some of the small things and large things that are being done by way of fundraising efforts in the ACT. We know that the Brumbies game on the weekend was a benefit game for the appeal. I understand the Brumbies players donated their match fees, which I think was about half of the takings, to the bushfire appeal. That was a significant amount of money for them to give up.
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