Page 4218 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 26 November 2013
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Establish enduring international recognition of Canberra and its role as the capital.
Build the positive image and reputation of Canberra as a city and community.
Build lasting legacies of community value through memorable celebrations and high quality projects.
Create impetus for future development of the national capital.
It will be interesting to see how the government reports against these in coming years. And we have to ask how much bang for our buck have we got. The ACT government put in some $20 million for programs; the federal government matched it with $6 million. I understand it may now be up to something like $32 million in total that has been spent on programs, but perhaps the Chief Minister could clarify that. But in terms of any of the six goals, I am not sure at this stage we can say we have achieved any of those, and I am not sure in the future whether we will be able to measure the increase against any of those criteria through any measurement process we might want to undertake.
Let us run through them slowly: increase the pride and ownership of Australians in their capital. I am not sure how you are going to measure that. Did the government have a baseline from which to start that measurement and have they got a process in place in which to track whether it is strictly as a consequence of the centenary celebrations that pride and ownership has gone up in Australians in their capital. It will be interesting to see the explanation of that.
The second goal: fully engage the community of Canberra, the capital region and the broader Australian community in the celebrations. I think we certainly achieved fully engaging the community of Canberra. There were that many events on that it would be hard not to be involved. One event that springs most to mind for me is the Canberra International Music Festival held in May. Pro Musica and its artistic director, Christopher Latham, really put on a great show and had good crowds attending. Another is the musical offering from a group of volunteers led by Professor Don Aitkin and Mrs Bev Aitkin. The group wanted to present a free musical event every day somewhere in Canberra during 2013. They have exceeded that goal, and by the end of the year they will have presented more than 600 free performances. They are two examples of things that went particularly well.
On Canberra Day I think most people probably had a good weekend, but I am not sure how much the capital region—and it will be interesting to get the government to define the “capital region”—and the broader Australian community fully engaged in the celebrations. If you have an international cricket, golf or football event in the ACT the question is: did people come because it was an international cricket, football or golf event in the territory or did they come because it was the centenary? It will be interesting to see how the government differentiates on that. We all know there are people who follow the cricket teams or the footy teams or the golf around the country. Well done for getting a great list of events, but it will be interesting to see what the measurement is in these areas.
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