Page 1169 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 24 June 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
FLAGS AND EMBLEMS
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.50): I move:
That, in recognition of the sovereign status of the ACT, the ACT Government take early steps to adopt (a) a flag for the Territory; (b) a logo for the Territory; and (c) flora and fauna emblems for the Territory.
Members may have noticed that I sat quietly and did not participate in that last debate. I knew that people's attitudes would be that it is a great idea to recognise our national emblem by having a national day. Nobody disappointed me and it was not necessary for me to contribute to that debate. Now we have a second debate on much the same issue. What we are talking about here is symbolism - symbols that mean something to us. I presume that everybody will be just as supportive of my proposal as they were of the previous one.
I thank Mrs Grassby because it was actually her motion that stirred me to action on this important issue. It reminded me that as Chief Minister this was one of the major items of business on my desk the day I lost the no-confidence motion. As with lots of other initiatives taken by the Alliance Government, this one got put in the bottom drawer by the new Government. I think it is an important issue. An ABC reporter interviewed me recently and I made the comment that one of the occasions on which I noticed the absence of an ACT flag, for example, was when I went to ministerial council meetings. Every member around the table had a little State flag in front of him, the Northern Territory representative sat there with the Northern Territory flag in front of him, and the ACT did not have one. The reporter's comment was, "Did you feel naked?". No, I did not feel naked; but it was noticeable that everybody else came to that meeting, as people tend to do, with symbols that indicate who and what they are. It is pretty much human nature.
If you look around your circle of friends, they belong to all sorts of organisations, clubs and the like, and every one of them has a symbol. People wear jackets and shirts with symbols on the pockets to say, "I am a member of this club or that club". Members of sporting clubs, in particular, like to be identified with the club they belong to. Look at the ACT Government. Various organisational elements of the ACT Government have their own logos, their own symbols. Parks and Conservation has a great one. If you see a vehicle driving around with one of those gang-gangs on the side, you know immediately that this is an officer from ACT Parks and Conservation.
I think it is a human thing to want to use symbols that show other people what you are and who you are. I have mentioned a range of symbols here. The wattle has been adopted as the national flower. The ACT has that little purple thing - do not ask me to pronounce it; it is Latin, and I know that it does not have a common name. I do not know whether that has been formalised as the ACT floral emblem. I doubt that it has.
I started thinking about birds and animals, and the sort of animal we could adopt. I thought about the feral cat, which is pretty common in the ACT; but I did not think that would be too popular. I thought maybe a wombat would be good, because almost every other Australian native animal has been adopted by somebody or other.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .