Page 938 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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amount of funds to the project? And when will this project come to fruition—in your lifetime?
MR STANHOPE: It probably depends on how long I choose to stay as Chief Minister—whether it is 10 or 12 years. I take some guidance from the Prime Minister of Australia on some issues. I turned 56 last Sunday. It is interesting that amongst the many things I share with my colleague the minister for education is a birthday—some years apart, of course, but Mr Barr and I share 29 April as a birthday. There is a difference of 22 years between the great dates, of course—and it is difficult to tell who came first.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR STANHOPE: I have lost the thread here now—in my lifetime. I turned 56 and I feel as fit and as motivated as ever. I think I have another good 10 or 12 years in me. That would get me through to 2019. I would think, Mrs Dunne, in response to your question, that it is quite possible that before I give up as Chief Minister, before I hand the reins to Ms Gallagher in 2019, the arboretum will be a reality at some stage of its development. It is a continuum; it is a lifetime project. I visited the national arboretum in Washington a couple of years ago. It has been in the making and the development—it is a work in progress—and I believe it is over 100 years old. So this is the nature of aboreta. I understand that the national arboretum of the United States of America, located in its national capital, Washington, is one of which the people are enormously proud.
It is interesting to compare the position on and attitude of the opposition in this place to an arboretum. In Washington is located the United States of America’s national arboretum. It is embraced by the people of Washington. It is loved by the people of Washington. It is a significant research facility for the research institutes of the whole of the United States of America. It is a significant part of the capacity of the United States of America and its research institutions in relation to issues such as climate change, to monitor, investigate and research issues of increasing significance over the coming century in relation to the impact of climate change on our environment—a role which our arboretum could play.
What interests me is the extent to which the Washington community has embraced its national arboretum. It has embraced it; it loves it. It is fantastic. It is a work in progress. It has been under development for well over a century. They are still investing in it, still improving it and still shaping it, and it is an adornment not just to the national capital of the United States of America but an adornment and a credit to the people of the United States of America that they did not have this genuflecting sort of abhorrence of anything new or visionary or that might take some time to achieve. And, of course, it was prepared and understood inherently that, in order to achieve a long-term result and an economic benefit, one has to invest and to nurture the investment.
An investment in an arboretum is fundamentally a very sound investment, and we have commenced the process, just as the national arboretum in Washington was commenced, I think well over 100 years ago. Successive governments over that
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