Page 697 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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support they are going to give, and I look forward to seeing them raise the half a million dollars so it goes to kids a little less lucky.
Canberra area theatre awards
Our Wellness Foundation
Softball Australia
Bilingual symposium
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (9.25): Mr Speaker, on the weekend I had the pleasure of attending four very interesting and inspirational functions, starting with the CAT awards—the Canberra Area Theatre awards—on Saturday night. My colleague Alistair Coe has already covered this event in great detail in last night’s adjournment, but I also felt that I should just pay tribute to Coralie Wood, who has been the mainstay of this absolutely fantastic theatre awards presentation that has been running for 15 years now. Each year it seems to get better. We think that we have seen the ultimate presentation that we could see, but Coralie Wood always pulls something out of her kitbag. Along with the colleagues who have already spoken about the CAT awards, I would also like to pay tribute to Coralie Wood for her fantastic contribution to the Canberra community as well as to the Canberra arts community.
On Sunday it was a fairly full day, and a couple of colleagues have already spoken about the Wellness Foundation function that we all attended, and I think we all look forward to attending next year to try our skills at flying paper aeroplanes on behalf of a very good cause. My parliamentary colleagues who also attended were Ms Hunter, Mr Coe and Brendan Smyth, and we had a fantastic time.
Also, it was very good to catch up with some of the notable sporting people in the Canberra community who were there—Herb McEachin, Lana Bruton, who has been involved in sport for quite a while, and Tad Dufelmeier, who is, of course, a former great Cannon—and some of the community contributors who were there—Steve Simpson, the director of nursing, paediatrics at Canberra Hospital, and Cam Sullings from Mix 106.3. Cam competed and, of course, ended up stealing the limelight from all of us.
From that function I attended the Softball Australia event, which was the finals of the John Reid Shield and the Gilley’s Shield competitions. This was a national tournament organised through Softball Australia along with Softball ACT, and it was a very successful finals series. It also gave me the great pleasure of the opportunity of catching up with an old Olympic colleague, Jenny Holliday, who is now the chair of Softball Australia. She mentioned that the tournament showcased many members of the world championship winning Aussie Steelers, taking their first step in their quest to defend their title in three years in New Zealand. Alongside this, the Aussie Spirit were at the pointy end of their preparation with this tournament, the final step for selection for the world championships to be held in Venezuela in June.
The event also gave Ms Holliday the opportunity to make a couple of major presentations. During the tournament they honoured two wonderful contributors to the sport of softball. Softball Australia inducted Sally McCreedy into the International Softball Federation Hall of Fame, and Ken Culpitt, already a member of the ISF hall
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