Page 3805 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 October 2005
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The day would not have got off the ground had it not been for Belconnen Bowling Club’s 70 volunteers, as well as those from the Canberra Belconnen Lions Club, the Variety Bash team and Sharability. I would like to congratulate each of them for the role they played in making the day such an outstanding success. However, all such events need a driving force. The force in this instance was the president of the Belconnen Bowling Club and the former president of Sharability, Bill Donovan, whom many here would know to be the former long-serving principal of Hawker College. It was a true family affair, as Bill’s son was the MC and disc jockey for the day and Bill’s wife was my personal bowls coach.
This is what community is all about: building social capital through the efforts and initiatives of a few people coming together, organisations working in partnership, and the ACT government providing funds through the Healthpact grant. The result was something greater than the sum of its parts, an example of true synergy. I commend the work of all those involved and congratulate them on the role they play in making our community stronger. Finally, I wish to place on the record my support for the Stanhope government’s initiative, made possible by Healthpact funding. It is initiatives such as these that make Canberra such a great place to live.
Recycling—Bokashi bucket
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (6.11): Members may be aware that a waste audit was conducted in this Assembly last year to see what percentage of material members, in particular, managed to recycle in their offices. As you are well aware, we have excellent facilities for recycling paper and, along with other residents in the ACT, plastics of most kinds, and tin and glass. However, there is general concern that a very large percentage of the waste that goes to landfill is indeed organic waste, which, of course, would be welcomed by our gardens in every way. But it can be quite difficult to get an apple core from one’s kitchen to one’s garden somewhere else. I approached the administration and procedure committee—I went through quite a process. I suggested that we have an environmental plan but certainly that, at the very least, we set up a system for recycling our green waste.
To cut a longish story short, as a result of that we now have something that most people will not know about unless they have read their Assembly newsletter, which I believe came out today or yesterday. People may have noticed a plastic bucket on the smokers balcony, as we affectionately call it. Indeed, because people did not know about it and in this climate of an accelerating fear of terrorism, I believe the bucket aroused the attendants’ very justified fear. Although not a backpack it was an unexplained object, and they did not know that it was, in fact, a Bokashi bucket.
The Bokashi bucket is now at your disposal and I am speaking today to encourage you to make use of it. I am going to put the instructions and other frequently asked questions out there but, for those who are lucky enough to be listening, I will explain how the Bokashi works. It is a sealed container, so there is no smell. You put any foodstuffs, including old teabags, coffee grounds, little bits of paper, apple cores and anything else into an ice-cream container that you keep in your office. When that becomes reasonably undesirable—or even every day—you pop it into the Bokashi. You need to lever the lid off because it is tightly sealed.
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