Page 302 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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East Asia. It is a fantastic opportunity and I am sure all members will enjoy the football. But the business development opportunities that come from hosting events like this are significant and the government and the Canberra business community intend to take full advantage of them.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Coe.
MR COE: Minister, has “GIO Stadium” been gazetted as an official ACT government place name?
MR BARR: We do not own the asset; it is owned by the Australian Sports Commission. We have a leasing arrangement with them. The naming rights for the stadium were granted for a four-year period with an additional option for GIO.
Multicultural affairs—National Multicultural Festival
MR GENTLEMAN: My question is to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. Can the minister inform the Assembly of the success of this year’s Multicultural Festival in promoting and welcoming our multicultural community? And how has this success been measured?
MS BURCH: It is with great pleasure that I can talk about the success of the 2014 Multicultural Festival. It won the whole-hearted support of the Canberra community, with over 250,000 people attending the event over the three days. This year there was a high quality cultural performance program across the eight stages and over 380 stalls providing food, information and craftwork.
The festival got off to an energised start on Friday, which I have spoken about, with the homegrown artist Timomatic the headline act, performing just after the local dance act Kulture Break. Other acts include Cossacks from Russia, Sol Nation, Benny Walker, Salsabor and Subsdance dance studios, the Bosnian Women’s Choir, Tibetan Yak Dance, the Canberra Bollywood school, Ethiopian cultural dance, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance classes and the popular rock’n’roll band Ol’ 55.
Every year, the Multicultural Festival brings together different cultures on a truly grand scale. This year was no exception. It is an affirmation of how much our city values and respects people from all backgrounds and loves coming together for a great party and celebration.
To assess the success of this year’s festival, a survey of spectators was undertaken. Initial results show a very high level of satisfaction.
Once again, I am very pleased that the report back from ACT Policing is that the event was largely incident free, with crowds very well behaved and without any major incident. That is a great outcome, with so many people—quarter of a million people—coming through our city centre over those three days. That report is very pleasing and shows that the community is out to enjoy our diverse and multicultural community over those three days.
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