Page 2994 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 14 September 1993
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MR BERRY: First of all, I do not interfere.
Mrs Carnell: Since when?
MR BERRY: I do not interfere since forever in the internal affairs of the Racing Club, and I will not. When it comes to the establishment of principal club status in the ACT, the Labor Party has long had the policy that we will support clubs which choose to seek statehood for themselves here in the ACT instead of being connected with New South Wales clubs and so on. As long as the ACT Racing Club chooses to pursue that course and to achieve principal club status, this Government will support them. The club has put to us the view that they want principal club status. I have made representations in various places around this country in order that that can be achieved. I will continue to do that while ever the racing club wants me to.
Lawn Cemeteries
MS SZUTY: Madam Speaker, my question without notice is to the Minister for Urban Services, Mr Connolly. It refers to recent media reports about the Cemeteries Trust requiring people to remove excess tributes from the graves of relatives. My question to the Minister is: Is he happy with the approach taken by the Cemeteries Trust with regard to this matter, given that the trust is dealing with people at various stages of the grieving process?
MR CONNOLLY: I thank Ms Szuty for the question. This has had considerable media coverage which would suggest that the Cemeteries Trust is somehow acting in an uncaring manner. I would suggest that that is not in fact the case. The Canberra Public Cemeteries Trust has requested families to remove some of the excess articles in the garden grave area, the garden plot area. That is an area of the cemetery where the intention is to have a lawn feel with small plaques, and this is a clear condition of the lease. That is not the traditional cemetery, which is a plot marked off and which may have elaborate headstones or whatever the family wishes. If people choose to have that style of burial, that is fine; they can do that. But, if they choose to go into the lawn cemetery area, they agree, in the lease that is issued, to comply with the rules that apply in that area. Those rules are to keep the feeling of a lawn with a small brass plaque. The trust does provide suitable vases in the flower wall. The intention is to keep them there. Families are notified of those restrictions at the time of bereavement and when they order the inscription for the plaque and so forth.
It has become common practice for some families to decorate graves with additional articles, and the trust policy is, and has been, to overlook this practice for a certain period after the burial, to assist in the grieving process; in effect, to waive the rules which families have agreed to abide by for a period, acknowledging that the period immediately after the loss is particularly stressful. However, from time to time the trust does endeavour to tidy up the lawn cemetery area, and that is often at the request of other families who, having chosen to go into the lawn cemetery area and made the conscious decision to opt for the lawn cemetery for their loved one rather than a conventional style of cemetery, want that lawn cemetery feeling to be preserved. As a result, the trust has approached a number of families who, for periods in excess of six months after the bereavement, have continued to place large quantities of flowers on the lawn area.
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