Page 1164 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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under. It is a great place that represents us.” The mission of the National Capital Authority is to build in the hearts of all Australians the nation’s capital. Well, we can do that as well.
I thank Mr Gentleman for the motion. Yes, it has been a success to date, and we look forward to the rest of the year. Well done to those who have been involved in making it so successful so far.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.03): I rise today in support of the motion, and I thank Mr Gentleman for bringing it forward. Certainly the centenary has been terrific so far this year. The sense in the community of what an interesting and fun time people are having is really a testament to that. That spirit was very much in observance on our one big day. Despite some of the logistics issues that may have arisen on that day, the atmosphere of the event itself was tremendous. I think that sums up the centenary quite well.
In some ways we have been celebrating the centenary for some time already. I think of some of the events that have taken place in the 18 months before the beginning of 2013 where various warm-up events and the markings of historical occasions took place. I think those events helped build that sense of anticipation for this year. Certainly there have been through the course of this year a range of tremendous events already and they have been touched on already.
The “one big day” was a tremendous success. We were incredibly lucky with the weather. I think some of the problems arose from the fact that so many people turned up. In a way that is a nice problem to have—that it was oversubscribed rather than undersubscribed.
For me one of the terrific events so far has been the parties at the shops. I had the good fortune to attend a couple of them in the northern part of Canberra. Again, the atmosphere at those events was terrific. Two of the things I really liked were, firstly, the community simply coming together, having a good time, seeing friends and making new friends and, secondly, people saying they wanted to see it happen again next year. If some of these events continue beyond centenary year, they will be a real legacy to the success of the centenary program.
There have, of course, been many other events, far too many to mention. Many of the real gems in the program have been some of the smaller events. Perhaps they have not drawn huge crowds but they have drawn crowds with a particular passion or they have opened peoples’ eyes to a new aspect of Canberra. Certainly for me as an amateur history buff I have enjoyed many of the things I have learnt about our city in the course of the last 12 or 18 months as we have come up to the centenary festivities themselves.
We, of course, had the centenary sitting here in the Assembly yesterday. It was very significant to see so many former members of the Assembly come to that occasion. I ran into Michael Moore again last night at another event and we were discussing the fact it was good to see so many of the former MLAs back to mark an important occasion and have the chance to swap notes at the morning tea afterwards. The
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