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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4098 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

a demographic study of all of Canberra, using graphs done by computer. The whole exercise was done in a bound copy, so it was a terribly professional job. Indeed the issue came up because they entered an international competition for high school students in Australia and New Zealand.

Most students who entered were in year 11, so it is particularly praiseworthy that these students were, in fact, only in Year 9. The students were asked to design a geographic information system. Our students used that to find the best place to site a theme park. They were awarded second prize internationally, which is a fantastic effort. Naturally they won the ACT section. I think all in the Assembly should join in congratulating them for their excellent effort. They concluded a theme park would best be built in the southern Canberra industrial area of Hume. The competition was one organised - - -

Mr Rugendyke: What about Belconnen?

MR STEFANIAK: I will come to that, Mr Rugendyke. Yes, you and I are a little bit disappointed about that, but they certainly went through it very thoroughly - - -

Mr Smyth: It is nice to see that down south is the place to be, Mr Stefaniak.

MR STEFANIAK: But not in Tuggeranong, Mr Smyth. The competition was actually authorised by AURISA, the Australasian Urban and Regional Information Systems Association. As part of their entry, the students were also asked to investigate the legislative landscape, the commercial and educational benefits, which they did. They also received, as a result of their efforts, a prize worth nearly $2,000, a digital camera, hand-held GPS navigation equipment and software from the sponsors' map info. The sponsor was there at the lunchtime presentation which both Mr Rugendyke and I attended. I thank them very much for their sponsorship and their assistance to our education system and these four fine young students from that excellent high school.

Turning to the conclusion - and I think you saw the publication: They did a demographic study. They looked at age groups, like 5 to 14, thinking that a lot of them would use the theme park; and then they went through from 15 to 24; 25 to 34, et cetera. They correlated that, for example, with the 25 to 34 or 35 to 44 age groups. It was interesting to see that they matched up the parents with the age group most likely to use a theme park. It was interesting to see that the same sorts of numbers of people in terms of those two older age groups, with the 5 to 14 year olds, lived in a large area of what could be described by the figures as north-eastern Tuggeranong, very close to the site chosen for the theme park. It was very interesting to see how they worked it all out.

To conclude, Mr Rugendyke, I will read their final conclusion. It is a four-paragraph one. It indicates three preferred areas they came up with and how they arrived at the main one. They stated:

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