Page 1010 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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Festival, including the Enlighten event, featured over 50 events held over 17 days in the first part of this month and it certainly showcased our city’s unique qualities through a range of exhibitions, displays and art forms.
I was delighted that 13 national attractions participated in Enlighten 2012, providing a combined total of 40 ticketed events and nine non-ticketed, open-door events. Undoubtedly those who were in Canberra on that first weekend in March would be aware that it was very wet. Fortunately most of the events scheduled for Enlighten that were to be held outdoors were able to be rescheduled and placed indoors and we were of course very pleased to see a break in the rainy weather on the second weekend and to see really big crowds enjoying the Enlighten events.
In spite of the wet weather, I am pleased to report that 22 of the Enlighten events sold out, with many visitors from across Australia coming to enjoy the variety of events that were held in the city over the period. As members of the Assembly and members of Australian Capital Tourism moved amongst the crowd over that period there was an overwhelmingly positive response from the public to this year’s Enlighten event. The breathtaking projections on some of Canberra’s, and indeed some of the nation’s, most prominent buildings tied together around those precincts provided a fantastic backdrop for thousands of local and interstate visitors to take advantage of these new and wonderful events.
I am led to believe that you, Mr Speaker, were in fact spotted amongst the festival goers, showing off your moves on the dance floor at the silent disco. I am advised that no footage has yet surfaced of your moves. There has been some speculation as to what you might have been dancing to; I am presuming that Kermit’s It Isn’t Easy Being Green was not on the playlist at the time. But, given what I have read in the paper today, perhaps you were singing along to a tune about the Leader of the Opposition that Denis Leary might have written in the early 90s.
Anyway, Mr Speaker, I congratulate you for taking part in what was indeed one of the most popular free events in this year’s program. You were one of many thousands of people who enjoyed the activities: 12,000 attended Symphony in the Park—
Mr Hanson: Nice little Labor-Greens love-in you’re having here.
MR BARR: Indeed. More than 25,000 ventured down to the lawns of Old Parliament House. More than 20,000 were at the 99th birthday, at Celebrate in the Park on 12 March, and more than 6,000 attended the performance by the Australian Ballet, the Telstra Ballet in the Park on 16 March—in the rain, I hasten to add.
It was a fantastic event for the city. I think the future is very bright for the Canberra Festival and Enlighten. It is a really important part of our events calendar and I certainly thank all of those who have been associated with staging the event and I look forward to an even more successful Canberra Festival and Enlighten in our centenary year in 2013.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hargreaves, a supplementary question.
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