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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 4621 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

These awards look at excellence, improvement and effort. They then look at the way people specialise in what they want to follow. You can see clearly, from the calibre of the awards given and the number of commendations made, that we have in the University of Canberra School of Tourism Management a very valuable resource for this territory-firstly, for those who want to get into tourism and, secondly, for an industry that we need to foster and grow.

As I said on the night, the Liberal Party is certainly very interested. That is why we have said we will put an additional $12 million into tourism-because we know it is important. That is why we will put more money into the Canberra Convention Bureau-because we know it is important. That is why this Liberal Party will make a decision very quickly on where to put the convention centre. That is to say, we will refurbish the existing convention centre so we have the facilities to match the industry. This will give people the opportunity to grow the business so the government in this place gets revenue and can provide the extra nurses, teachers, police officers and security the people of Canberra want.

World junior chess championship

Wallabies rugby union team

MR STEFANIAK (4.29): I rise to congratulate seven fine young students from the ACT who were among 19 Australians who competed with 1,000 youngsters from all over the world in Halkidiki, Northern Greece, in the World Junior Chess Championships held between 22 October and 3 November-some 11 days. There was no rest day. All children played 11 competition rounds on those days. Most of them will now be back home.

The ACT's top performer overall was 14-year-old Canberra High Student, Michael Wei. Michael's score of six out of 11 placed him equal 36th in a field of 126 in the world under 14 boys championship. Unfortunately, he had to crunch a fellow Australian, James Cronan, along the way, but the whole tournament-it was Michael's first overseas event-was a huge success for this talented young man.

Our other two top 50 placings came from our oldest and youngest representatives-10-year-old Curtin Primary student, Kayleigh Smith, and Shannon Oliver from Radford College who is 17-who also did exceptionally well. Shannon had a great result in one of the truly elite divisions, including draws with both a women's international master and a women's FIDE master.

I congratulate all the young people from the ACT who competed on an excellent performance. These include Kayleigh Smith from Curtin Primary, in the girls under 10s; Tamzin Oliver, from St Monicas Primary School in the girls under 12s, Junta Ikeda, from Weetangera Primary School in the boys under 12s; Michael Wei from Canberra High in the boys under 14s; Gareth Oliver from Radford College in the boys under 16s; Peter Jovanovic from Narrabundah College in the boys under 16s and Shannon Oliver from Radford College in the girls under 18s. Congratulations go to all those fine young players and to ACT Junior Chess. Having seven out of 19 Australians in that squad is a mighty effort. I congratulate all the young people concerned.

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