Page 3000 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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unfortunate and gradual disappearance of the natural environments that have long been the focus of Mr Makin’s work seems to lend a mood of preservation and authenticity to his pictures, capturing that extra detail to ensure that future audiences can appreciate the painted scenes when the original landscapes have long gone.
The Jeffrey Makin En Plein Air exhibition continues at the Stephanie Burns Fine Art gallery in Yarralumla until this weekend. It will be closing on Saturday. I encourage all Canberrans who are in the area and who enjoy landscape art to drop in and experience Mr Makin’s spectacular and colourful works. They, I think, will appeal to a broad range of tastes. I commend the wonderful paintings that Mr Makin has produced to those members and the public of Canberra who have the chance to attend the exhibition.
Citizenship
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (6.13): I rise this evening briefly to reflect on the citizenship ceremony that Mr Mulcahy and I, amongst others, attended in Commonwealth Park on Sunday morning. This was a special ceremony, as it was held on the same day that many such ceremonies were being held around Australia to recognise the importance of good citizenship.
Commonwealth Park was a wonderful setting for this ceremony, as it was held in the midst of Floriade. It drew a large crowd of interested bystanders. We have all heard of the record number that attended Floriade on the first weekend, and many people were attracted by the music and colour of the ceremony.
This important ceremony bestowed Australian citizenship on people from over 23 countries, from Afghanistan to Russia, from Vietnam to the United States, from New Zealand and Canada to the Congo and Iraq. The youngest person to receive citizenship was four years old, and I believe the oldest was 66. These new citizens happily sang along with the Blokes Choir to the words of We are Australian and we all joined in with enthusiasm.
I reflected on the words of the song: we are one but we are many. In the face of so much debate about Australian values at the moment, I reflected on the value of acceptance, both of our diversity and our similarities, our differences as well as our commonalities. I think it would be a great pity if, during this current debate around these so-called Australian values, we lost sight of that value. We would all be the poorer for it. I thank all those people that were involved in assisting the organisation of that ceremony, including the volunteers from the Burley Griffin Lions Club.
Belconnen—40th anniversary
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (6.15): Just in case we do not get back to Ms Porter’s motion on the 40th birthday of Belconnen, I thought that I would make some comments in the adjournment debate. As we have heard, the Rt Hon Doug Anthony inaugurated Belconnen in June 1966, and it is nice to think that for many years Doug Anthony, the member for Richmond, was my local member.
I really wanted to contemplate some of the shortfalls in Belconnen, and Mr Stefaniak touched on these. He said that, in many ways, Belconnen has somewhat of a Cinderella
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