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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 475 ..

MRS DUNNE: So much for collegiality! Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. On 22 January this year the Chief Minister said that we as a government did not know about this breach of the act until December 2003. Why did you wait until 13 February to set the record straight that you in fact knew in October 2002?

MR CORBELL: I was not aware of the Chief Minister’s comments. I think I was still on leave at that time.

Mrs Dunne: Don’t you read the papers when you’re on leave?

MR CORBELL: No, I don’t. One of the pleasures of being on leave is that I do not read the paper or listen to the radio. That is what I do, Mr Speaker. I was formally on leave at that time, to the best of my knowledge, and I was not aware of the Chief Minister’s statement until some time after I returned from my Christmas and New Year leave.

Tourism

MS MacDONALD: My question is to the Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Quinlan. I ask whether he could advise the Assembly of the recent launch of Canberra’s new branding exercise.

MR QUINLAN: When you come up with a plan that Australian Capital Tourism has come up with, you do it with your heart in your mouth. I am sure that it is, first, a great joy for them that they have finished the job and put it out there and, secondly, a great relief that it has been done and that it appears to have been roundly accepted.

I hope and trust that all the tourism industry and Canberra get behind the program. The brand—See yourself in Canberra—can go anywhere. At this stage it has gone to some television commercials, which are not of course a campaign in themselves; nevertheless they are a method of getting the brand out there, getting people used to the idea and maybe inculcating in them something that can be used as a trigger in later campaigns.

In tourism and promotion it is important that we have a brand, and that we promote it and promote it positively. Canberra has to get over a negative image. It is part of the Australian idiom that we knock other places.

I launched a backpacker promotion several months ago. I spoke to some young German people backpacking through Canberra. They had been advised not to go to Canberra. They had been told by tourism operators in Sydney, “Don’t spend too much time in Canberra; there’s nothing there.” A couple of them were political science students.

I am here only to advise the Assembly what we have done. We are asking for support in this. I am asking all of Canberra, including this Assembly, to get behind it, to take a positive attitude, to be part of the promotion of Canberra, and to breakdown some of the negative images that Canberra carries.

This is the flagship, the lead logo that will, over the next few weeks, take us on a wide promotional campaign as far as Perth. Please give it your support. I did not mention Feel the Power once, until then.

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