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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2216 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

There was no excuse for what occurred to Floriade. For years and years it was a free festival, and then it was treated to a display of adhocery that I have never seen before by an events manager who was serious about the future of an event. If you did not belong to this place and hope that you knew better, you would think that somebody was trying to destroy the festival. Part of the great festival atmosphere of that event has always been the myriads of Canberra people who turn up to join with interstate visitors.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. You may take your second period, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: Those myriads may not appear again. That is a sad thing for Floriade, which I think depended on the atmosphere that was created by the tens of thousands of Canberrans who visited the festival and gave it an ambience which was valued by interstate visitors. Keeping Canberrans out of the festival or charging them exorbitant fees diminished the attraction of the festival. That is a measure of the style of this government which people are reminded about too often.

I will not go into the Feel the Power campaign. I searched the car yard for Feel the Power numberplates recently. They do not seem to be so prominent any more. I could not find one.

Mr Quinlan: Not even on a sports car?

MR BERRY: Not even on a low-slung, two-door coupe. I heard the praises of those numberplates sung in chorus over there when it was a matter for discussion in this place. People paraded them around the car park outside with gay abandon. It seems that Feel the Power is bit on the nose these days and we will not see any more of that. Mind you, I did see the plane fly overhead one day, but it was flying too high and too fast for me to see what was written on the side of it. I am not sure what it had written on the side of it. I could not get any value from that either.

We are yet to deal with the Olympics issue. I hope fervently that the territory does well out of the Olympics, but I rather suspect that the Olympic committee may well have "gospered" us and we will have to pay again. These are important public events for the future of Canberra, but it has been the flashy style of this government that has got us into trouble on these issues.

It was the Chief Minister's Department which was associated with the tragic scar on our past-the hospital implosion. Any of us who drive along Flynn Drive will be reminded of that forever. There are many people in my constituency who still say to me that this government has not paid the price for that and they ought to have paid the price; that nowhere else in a democracy would a government survive this sort of tragedy. They are right.

There are a couple of other issues I should refer to, but whilst on the flashy and showy style of this government I want to talk about the V8 car race for a moment. I visited it for a short time. As far as street car races go, I think it was a pretty good effort. It ought to have been, because it had money thrown at it. But I see that commentators in other places are not so enthused about the V8 car race. Peter McKay, a noted commentator on things motoring, had some scathing things to say in the Sydney Sun-Herald of 18 June

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