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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 3541 ..

MS MacDONALD (continuing):

Casper the Friendly Ghost, and other characters I have not heard of-or which were not around in my day. I am sure it was very exciting for all the youngsters.

There were the fireworks over the lake and the battle of the bands-as well as other on-stage activities. There was the Tuggeranong bike festival and, as Mr Hargreaves has mentioned, the great carp catch. There were also the model yacht races and the marathon-another water event taking advantage of Lake Tuggeranong.

Then there was the tennis tournament, as well as a bowling fundraiser. As I said, Mr Speaker, a wide variety of events took place at the Tuggeranong Community Festival. The organisers of the community festival are to be congratulated for bringing together such a diversity of events. A community event such as this shows that a community, whether it is in good times or bad-and Tuggeranong has had a few bad times lately-will come together to celebrate their talents and achievements, and give their offerings. I consider that to be a great thing. It is something to be encouraged into the foreseeable years.

The other day, I attended a luncheon. The guest speaker at that luncheon gave a quote, which was: "Clever people come up with great ideas, and brilliant people steal those ideas."In just such a fashion, I would like to see the ACT taking a few of the good ideas from other states. Although it may pain us to think of it, other states do come up with some good ideas. Rather than knocking them back as not being our own, I believe we should adopt the attitude that it is a good move to steal those ideas.

One such excellent idea that I would like to see adopted in the ACT-it relates to this motion that Mr Hargreaves has put up-is the Brisbane River Festival. Although we do not have a large river to celebrate here in Canberra, I would like to see us celebrating our lakes-not only Lake Burley Griffin, but also Lake Tuggeranong and Lake Ginninderra.

One of the fantastic things about the Brisbane River Festival is that it brings a whole lot of activities together. That includes things such as cleaning up beside the river. We could incorporate things like Clean-Up Canberra or clean up the rivers type of thing. They have had speakers talking about water conservation-and other features about water. They had a seafood festival, which we would not necessarily have.

Mr Humphries: I will be in that!

MS MacDONALD: You would be in the seafood festival, would you, Mr Humphries? I do not think we get any seafood other than yabbies out of our lake-or carp. I do not know that you can turn carp into any gourmet delicacies.

Mr Smyth: You have to prepare them in the right way. They must stand, you let the crap come out of them, and then you cook them properly.

MS MacDONALD: I believe you have to let a lot of the mud come out of the carp before you can eat it. As far as I understand it, it still tastes pretty muddy. It would not be my dish!

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