Page 1175 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 28 March 2017
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The reason this is so important is that they are Canberrans. They are not getting flown in on lucrative contracts from across the countryside; these are local Canberra players who have come up through the ranks of the Vikings, Norths, Easts, Wests or Gungahlin Eagles.
Canberra gets a lot of unfair criticism in the media. We are teased about our small population, and we are teased about the politicians that visit our city. Madam Deputy Speaker, do you know what criticism we never get? How bad our local Rugby team is. The Brumbies have led this country in Rugby Union for generations. We have the best Rugby Union team in the country. You cannot buy a record like ours. Some clubs may try, but you cannot replicate a culture and community like ours that drives these results.
One of the highlights on the Canberra social calendar is the home and away match with the New South Wales Waratahs. We love watching our boys drive up the Hume Highway and towel up our New South Wales cousins. Madam Deputy Speaker—and this is an important point—it is not the size of your state that should matter. If the size of your state had anything to do with success, the Rebels and the Force have a lot of explaining to do.
This should be a decision about what is best for the game of Rugby Union. I call upon SANZAAR and the ARU to cut the speculation. I call on SANZAAR and the ARU to do the right thing. I call on SANZAAR and the ARU to do the right thing by Rugby, and that is to stand up for the Brumbies.
Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders—Bundian Way
MR MILLIGAN (Yerrabi) (4.38): On Sunday this week I had the pleasure of attending the sharing stories, run by the Committee on Racial Equality, at the Friends (Quaker) meeting house. John Blay spoke about the Bundian Way and shared stores of early interactions between first nation peoples and the early settlers in the Eden hinterland and the Snowy Mountains.
The Bundian Way is a descriptive name, taking its name from the Bundian Pass in the Snowy Mountains, which was the easiest walking route from the tablelands of southern New South Wales to the coastal plains just south of Merimbula. The route passes through state forests, national parks and rural and coastal areas. It begins at Mount Kosciuszko, or Targangal as it is known to some of the Indigenous peoples, and runs for some 330 kilometres, finishing at Twofold Bay. Two thirds of the Bundian Way lies in national parks and state forests, with much of it untouched by western civilisation. In fact there are areas where cars have never been, and you can see the track still very clearly.
The stories for the afternoon were told to us by John Blay, naturalist and author of On track: searching out the Bundian Way, who began his work in the 1970s by immersing himself in and travelling on the tracks and recording the many stories of the Bundian Way. John shared with us stories and photos of the natural flora and fauna to be found along the Bundian Way. He told us a story of the romance of white
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