Page 612 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020
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MR GUPTA: Can the minister please inform the Assembly about some of the great upcoming events still to happen this summer, and going into our fantastic autumn festival season?
MR RAMSAY: I thank Mr Gupta for the supplementary question. With the recent rains, the bushfires on our doorstep largely extinguished and the road to recovery beginning, it seems that Canberrans may be ready to cautiously get out and celebrate life in this wonderful city.
The upcoming festival season is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to eat, drink, dance, sing and to be happy together. This weekend we will see the city centre come alive with the National Multicultural Festival. At the end of the month, Enlighten will switch on, from 28 February to 15 March, for 17 nights of stunning light projections, neon art, food and entertainment. Enlighten again will include the hugely popular night noodle markets, for a record 11 nights this year.
During this great season we will also have the Balloon Spectacular, which will see 30 colourful balloons take to the skies above Canberra, including, as I was pleased to announce yesterday, the return of Skywhale, which is now owned by the National Gallery of Australia, and an impressive tyrannosaurus rex balloon that is visiting us from Canada.
Over the Canberra Day long weekend we will see three days of fantastic celebrations, starting with a new program of suburban celebrations of Canberra Day in the town centres on Saturday, 7 March, a free symphony in the park with the CSO on the Sunday, and a community celebration on the lawns between Questacon and the Portrait Gallery on the Monday.
I look forward to providing more detail about Canberra Day celebrations in the next few days. I certainly hope that the opposition will pay more attention to what is going on around the Canberra Day celebrations than they are in this chamber.
Canberra Health Services—SPIRE project
MR HANSON: My question is to the Minister for Health. An email dated 21 November 2019 from the head of the SPIRE project states:
We are behind where we had hoped we would be on developing agreed functional briefs with clinicians.
Minister, why is the government behind schedule on developing agreed functional
briefs with clinicians?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Hanson for the question. It is because we are engaging in detailed consultation with those clinicians, and that is obviously taking a little longer than had originally been anticipated. But we have said from the beginning of this project that it would be undertaken in absolute consultation with consumers, carers and families, clinicians and the local community. That is exactly what is occurring.
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