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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (14 November) . . Page.. 3661 ..

I hope the Assembly will unanimously support this motion to help create a history and landscape in our community that are inclusive and to ensure that women take their proper place, recognised as contributors to the building of our nation.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services, Minister for Planning and Minister for Industrial Relations) (3.33): Mr Speaker, the government will be supporting the motion moved by Ms Dundas today. We will be doing that because it is a sensible way forward, but we will also be doing it because this is the motion that I proposed to Ms Dundas to move.

I concede that my office has been in discussion intermittently for quite some time with Ms Dundas' office about this matter, and we eventually indicated to Ms Dundas' office that the government was prepared to move a motion to amend these place names. Ms Dundas then asked for advice on the names of the women we were proposing, and I subsequently discovered she was moving the motion herself.

Whilst I am happy to support the motion, it is worth acknowledging that the government was proposing to move this motion up to the point Ms Dundas requested the names and decided she would put it forward herself.

It is important at the outset to acknowledge that the government believes that it is important to have a good representation of women among the ACT's place names. This is a view shared by the Place Names Committee and one that I have also recently reinforced with the committee.

There are 19 street names listed in the instrument we are discussing today, which is the largest one to be notified for over two years. The instrument names streets for Horse Park Estates 1 and 2, which are new greenfields developments close to Gungahlin Town Centre. The theme adopted for that suburb is industrialists and aspects of industry, and Gungahlin pioneers.

That theme was devised and recommended to the government by the Place Names Committee, which advises the relevant minister. Each Canberra suburb has a theme on which its streets are named, and the government strives to be all embracing in implementing those themes.

This policy is one of the oldest policies pertaining to the national capital and has been carried through virtually unchanged since an ordinance was first passed in 1924. This policy applies also to place names under the control of the National Capital Authority, as evidenced in last year's street naming in Russell to commemorate Sister Vivian Bullwinkel. Under the previous ACT government, a bridge over the Molonglo was named in honour of Sylvia Curley.

We commemorate people, towns, rivers and mountains; we commemorate our Aboriginal and islander heritage; we celebrate scientific, cultural and sporting achievements; we commemorate military and other history; and so on. It is a policy unique to Canberra and one that I know all members in this place value.

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