Page 2352 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 June 2005
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we will create here in the ACT; and are not in any way committed to forming some real sense around the Burley Griffin vision for the ACT.
We need to acknowledge that it is there in Marion Mahony’s drawings of Canberra, as delivered by the Griffins back in the early part of the last century, that there would be a major arboretum in the vicinity of this site. To some extent, we are maintaining some faith with that original design and that original vision which has stood this city in great stead and allows us to stand here as Canberrans, proud residents of the most beautiful planned city in the world—a magnificent city, a city which we, as a generation, have an opportunity to enhance through the delivery of this particular project.
Perhaps it is not surprising—it is disappointing—that the opposition in this place does not have the capacity to grasp any understanding of the significance of what it is that we are seeking to achieve. We are, as a government and as a community, determined to deliver, through this project, something magnificent, something that will endure, something that will provide for the people of the ACT something that they can be enormously proud of, that they will visit regularly and constantly, which will act as a magnet for tourists to this place and which will spawn significant economic development and opportunity. I think it is for that purpose that we have significant Canberrans such as Jim Murphy, Lloyd Whish-Wilson, Anne Kowalski, Professor Peter Kanowski, Rosemary Follett, John Mackay and Eric Koundouris prepared, eager, to serve on the interim board and eager to be a part of a project that they know will stand the ACT in good stead into the future.
It surprises me that the Liberal Party continues to knock it because it does not have the vision, the creativity, the capacity to look beyond the next year or two; that it cannot imagine what it is that we are seeking to achieve and what we will achieve because we have the courage, the vision and the commitment to this community.
MRS DUNNE: I thought Mr Hollway was purple yesterday, but that was possibly incandescent.
MR SPEAKER: Come to the question, please.
MRS DUNNE: Has the government conducted further studies into the viability of the arboretum other than the initial one conducted by ACIL-Tasman?
MR STANHOPE: A whole range of inquiry or investigation has been undertaken and continues into a whole range of aspects around the arboretum. We have a magnificent design, a design that was formed as a result of a major national competition that we conducted and which I think is a thing of some significant view. That is not, of course, writ in stone. There is a whole range of issues about our capacity to deliver that particular design that are, of course, the focus of the interim board.
It is why, of course, I was particularly keen to have a range of business people, people who are able to advise on issues about, for instance, our capacity to generate income and tourism and to manage it as an ongoing business proposition—people, such as Jim Murphy, who have an enormous amount to give to a project such as this. I do not know whether any members of the opposition are aware of Jim Murphy’s reputation or his
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