Page 2780 - Week 07 - Thursday, 3 July 2008
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of citizens in Australia who feel very strongly about it—migrants from Tibet and, indeed, migrants from China. I think Australia has a good, very friendly but robust relationship with China and it is important that we are frank with them and indeed that they be frank with us if they think we are doing things they do not necessarily approve of.
What I propose doing is circulating that to members out of session. Perhaps we could all sign it. I will make sure the Senate has in fact passed it. I think it is rather appropriate, in this Olympic year, that we pass that on to, I would imagine, probably the Prime Minister, being the appropriate authority, given that the Senate has passed a motion which would probably go to the Prime Minister or the foreign minister.
ACT National Trust
Stepping Stones
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (7.15): I wanted to mention two recent events. One was on Saturday and was the occasion when the National Trust launched historic signs which are to be erected at Canberra’s heritage places. Mr Gentleman and I were at Dirrawan Gardens in Reid on Saturday. The occasion was the Chief Minister’s launch of the ACT National Trust historic signs project. It signified the first phase of a National Trust project called heritage places and included the launch of a particular publication that related to Reid in which there is a time chart on that suburb of Canberra going back to the first European naming of the plains in the area as Limestone Plains and tracing its history and Griffin’s design, the original layout of Reid and so on.
The National Trust signage program also will include two important Aboriginal places in Girrawah Park and Mulligans Flat, which, they report, were used to obtain stone for the manufacture of a wide range of implements. They are also placing signs at the site of an early rural homestead, Athllon in Tuggeranong; at the ruins of a former convict’s home at Amaroo; at the site of two former school houses where children of the early rural community were taught; at the Old Coach Road; at Mulligans Flat—and this will appeal to Lainie—which once provided a vital link to the railhead at Gundaroo during the 19th century.
Interestingly also, they are going to place a sign in Fyshwick—and I was not aware of this; other members might have been—which apparently in 1918, during the final year of World War I, hosted an internment camp which was built and covered much of the commercial district, with residents being mainly German and Austrian nationals who had come from other internment camps in Australia and from the British colonies in the Pacific.
The National Trust is to be commended for this initiative. I guess there were somewhere in the order of 150 residents who attended this plaque unveiling in Reid on Saturday, including, I believe, the great-great-grandson of former Prime Minister Reid, a gentleman, who is a Canberra resident, by the name of Cameron Reid. The whole occasion was a wonderful event in one of Canberra’s most important suburbs from a heritage point of view and I was pleased to be part of it.
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