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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3952 ..

MR KAINE (12.01): Mr Speaker, I present Report No. 3 of the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Tourism entitled "Inquiry into a Bird and/or Another Animal Emblem", together with the extracts of the minutes of proceedings. I move:

That the report be noted.

I will be quite brief. Members will remember that in December last year the Assembly asked the committee to inquire into and report on the available options for faunal emblems to represent the Australian Capital Territory and, in particular, to consider a suitable animal and/or bird emblem. The committee, in accordance with the wishes of the Assembly, engaged in as wide a consultation process as was possible and wrote to 32 local organisations inviting submissions. We also advertised in the Canberra Times, the Chronicle and the Valley View, with requests for public comment by 19 April this year. In fact, we continued to accept submissions after that date.

Despite all that, we received only 17 submissions, and the details of those submissions are contained in the report. As part of those submissions there was developed a series of criteria that various people thought should apply to the selection of an emblem of the kind that we were looking at. I believe that the committee has taken those criteria into account in arriving at its conclusion. I use the word "conclusion" advisedly because we were not, in fact, asked to recommend; we were simply asked to look at and see what was available.

People reading the details of the submissions will note that there were three clear winners in the competition, if you like to put it that way. The most popular was the gang-gang cockatoo, closely followed by the corroboree frog and the southern lined earless dragon or the highland earless dragon. It is those three emblems that we are suggesting that the Government look at and make a judgment as to whether they want to adopt one or more of them.

One of the things that did come out of our inquiries was the question of just what you use such emblems for, because the Territory already has, for example, a very good emblem in the form of the Tourism Commission logo. We also have adopted the Canberra Region Campaign logo. We have had a floral emblem for some years which has never, in fact, been formally adopted but which is used by people occasionally for different purposes. But there does arise the question of just what the purpose of these emblems might be. We have suggested to the Government that, if they decide to adopt one or more of these three which emerged as the clear winners in the consultation process that we went through, they also attempt to define and publish the purposes for which such emblems might be used. Mr Speaker, I commend the report to the Assembly.

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