Page 3358 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 21 October 2014
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from his background in the police force in particular, and going through a personal journey.
For those of us in the audience who were a little bit older, Deane Hutton and Rob Morrison talked about curiosity. If those names ring any bells, they were from The Curiosity Show. Certainly, for me, having grown up with that show, it was a wonderful opportunity to hear them speak and inspire us. Perhaps the bravest presentation of the day was from Khadija Gbla, who spoke about female genital mutilation from a very personal perspective.
Touching on a few of those speakers gives us a sense of how broad and extraordinary the TEDx event was. I know that Hannah, when I got a chance to speak to her during the course of the day, found it a very fascinating day as well.
I was also inspired by the fact that the organising team had a goal of zero waste for the day. Their intent was that there would be nothing that was not recyclable arising from the event. Whilst I do not know how they went, just from observing the practice of the day, I am pretty sure they got pretty damn close to achieving, if they did not achieve, their goal. I congratulate them on setting such high aspirations.
Having made those few brief remarks, I want to come back to Hannah’s speech. I thought she wrote a very good speech. I do not think I disagreed with a word of it. I particularly liked her line about needing to be a city of activism, not “slacktivism”, and putting the call out there for people to get involved in things. I know activism has had a controversial history in this place in recent times, but I think that Hannah’s remarks were well made in the sense of essentially calling on citizens to be involved and to get out there and be active on issues that they think are important. I took that as a key message from her speech, and I congratulate her on that sentiment. I now table the speech that she presented that day. I present the following paper:
TEDxCanberra—Pollie for a Day Adventure—Inaugural speech—Hannah Watts.
[See schedule 1 at page 3403.]
MS PORTER (Ginninderra), by leave: I too would like to make some brief remarks about the TEDx program. On 9 October, as others have said, I had great pleasure in chairing the inaugural TEDx session here in the Assembly. As part of the program, members were also asked to host participants in their offices to assist with the participants constructing their maiden speeches. My office hosted a young man by the name of Tom Berry. As you have heard, other participants were hosted in Mr Smyth’s and Mr Rattenbury’s offices.
I would also like to add my thanks to all the people in TEDx for this initiative, and also all of those in this place who assisted in any way—particularly the communications office, who supported the students and the whole process during the day.
Tom Berry said in his speech that his interest and studies in politics started as a small child. He said that it was watching question time at a very young age which shaped his keen interest which continues to this day. It reminds me very much of growing up
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