Page 214 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2008
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However, I have been advised by my wife, who was there all day Saturday manning the United Arab Emirates strong point and by my colleagues who were there in numbers on Saturday and Sunday that the fair was a terrific affair. I congratulate the Office of Multicultural Affairs, I congratulate Dominic Mico and I congratulate the committees and the sponsors who really did the work. Certainly the contractors, from about five days out from Saturday morning, were placing tents around the town in preparation. It looks like it was well done. I want to give the minister a pat on the back and say that the government have done okay with the weekend fair.
The festival, of course, continues and tonight many of us are going to the Multicultural Ball. I will be walking wounded, but at least I will be getting to an activity for the first time. It looks as if the festival overall is going quite okay. Let us see how it looks in the wash-up.
The fair is incredibly important to the ACT. It is becoming more and more a showcase activity nationally. I am advised by my wife, my colleagues and others that there were a lot of interstate visitors for this event, which is a showcase national event on the national calendar. That is very pleasing. So I give credit where credit is due. Well done to the authorities, the LMA and the minister for the way the fair over the weekend has gone and the festival overall, which we now celebrate for another 10 days.
It is important for the multicultural community and for multiculturalism in the ACT that the festival and the weekend fair are successful. It is a very important and colourful expression of the strengths of the ACT’s multicultural community. The festival is winding down at the moment. So well done, and I thank you for the opportunity to talk about it, Mr Speaker.
Canberra International Airport
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (6.03): I want to report on the public meeting that I hosted last week in the Legislative Assembly reception room. You were all invited to that meeting, but there were specific invitations given to two people in this place. Let me go back a little bit.
The aim of the meeting was for community members to give their views to politicians and for politicians to indicate to the community their particular thinking about the expansion that is predicated in the airport’s master plan. We started with a list of stars that we wanted to attend our meeting and we sent invitations to Mr Stanhope, Mr Seselja, Senator Humphries, Senator Lundy, Bob McMullan, Annette Ellis, Mike Kelly and Mayor Pangallo. As things progressed, of course, and as various people could not come, we asked other people. It is quite difficult to organise a public meeting in that way and, of course, it is not particularly good to get your invitation a week before the meeting because someone has just let me know they cannot come.
In the line-up that we ended up with was a person we always meant to have. That is Andrew McIntosh, who was at the Australia Institute and is a co-author of the paper: Aviation Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the ACT. We had Frank Pangallo, of course. We had Mick Gentleman representing the ACT government and Geoff Willans from
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