Page 2916 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012

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Curtin Community Bank

MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (6.41): I will just speak briefly. Mr Doszpot has already spoken about the opening of the Bendigo community bank at Curtin today. I was also at the opening of that, as was Gai Brodtmann, member for Canberra. I am actually a shareholder in the bank, so it is very exciting to see it opening.

The wonderful thing about community banks, and what Bendigo Bank does, is that they give back to the community. That social return on investment is something that the Greens are very supportive of. I am personally. That is something very much that the community bank concept does. They give back to the community in which they are located, as is the case with Wanniassa and Calwell. That is a wonderful initiative. It is great that that will now be available to residents at Curtin—but not just for the people of Curtin: people in the wider Woden area will now be able to access this community bank.

Mr Doszpot has already named the steering committee who set that up. I would particularly like to acknowledge Viola Kalokerinos, who is now the deputy chair of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Ageing. Congratulations to her for that also. As was noted today in various ways, she has been the empress, the queen and also the president of Curtin. She has been really instrumental in getting this bank up, and it is very much a credit to her that this has happened. We should also acknowledge Jayson Hinder, who is with Bendigo financial services and has been very supportive of this as well.

Performing arts

MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (6.43): Over the last four or five weeks, I have had the opportunity to attend a number of high school musical and theatrical performances. I want to pay tribute to the performing arts and drama teachers in some of our schools.

In early May, I had the opportunity to attend St Edmund’s college and St Clare’s college Back to the 80’s: the Totally Awesome Musical!, which was a jukebox musical reliving the 80s, and bad hair and leg warmers. I know that the kids enjoyed the bad hair and the leg warmers, but they did not have to live through it; they only had to play through it. I want to congratulate Nigel Palfreyman, the teacher in charge of dance and drama at St Edmund’s college, on a fantastic job done there.

I have to put on the record that the commonality of all of these things is that one of my children have been in all of these things.

The next thing that I attended last week was a lengthy season of The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard put on by Marist college. The female roles were not played by the boys. Ms Carla Weijers and the performing arts department of Marist college put on a great performance, supported by some great young actors, in a very difficult play. Farce is difficult, and Tom Stoppard’s farcical play about the genre of the murder mystery was really well executed. I was there on one occasion when the CAT


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