Ms BURNET (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, there have been some fantastic Adjournment speeches. I also acknowledge Richard Scolyer’s struggle. Also, the member for Lyons, Tabitha Badger, and her tribute to Christine Milne AO. It was good to be at the Honour Roll for Women with you last Friday, honourable Speaker.
I want to talk about a couple of events I went to last Saturday, 8 March. I was out and about in the electorate of Clark, in the northern suburbs. The first event I went to was the 10th birthday celebrations of the Moonah Arts Centre. The Moonah Arts Centre is a great little centre in the heart of Moonah, in the heart of Clark. It has been responsible for some of the most exciting and vibrant events in this community, and it makes for a really good third space. It is a publicly owned event space and gallery, it is affordable for people to hire and put their own events on, and Moonah is lucky to have it right in the middle of the community.
It is one of the best spots for under‑18s and young artists to put on shows and learn their craft in a properly professional arts environment, with good curation and support. It has also made a great effort to engage the multicultural community in the northern suburbs, which is one of the most diverse, if not the most diverse community in the state. I thank the team, including Andrew Clark, who is the creative communities coordinator. I caught up with Scout Winter who is there as well, and many other members of the team.
It is one of the most favourite places to go. It has gone from strength to strength from the time it was first started. It is a real gem of a place, so happy 10th birthday, Moonah Arts Centre.
After that event, I went to the AGM of the Hobart Northern Suburbs Railway held at the Claremont RSL. I congratulate the new committee and Toby Rowellen and who retains the President’s role. Toby noted, quite lamentably, that it is 50 years since the closure of Hobart’s suburban rail services. A milestone, not necessarily one to celebrate for this group.
As part of the AGM, the guest speaker, Tony Cohen, talked about public transport and the rail system. He was a former train driver. He is involved with the transport museum in the northern suburbs, and he was talking about the role of integrated transport. He gave quite a lot of historic examples of when both ferries and trains were linked to buses. The passengers who might have caught ferries from west to east of the Derwent were taken home by buses that were waiting there.
That might sound like it is a hard thing to do, but if you want to catch a ferry to Bellerive currently, catching a bus is not a matter of just seeing where the bus is waiting when the ferry is about to arrive, but you have to walk up to a fairly hostile area to wait for a bus that may or may not come. A lot of things demonstrated in this historic account were really relevant to making public transport work well in our current environment. Not hard to do, but it was certainly good to see the photographs and hear those stories of people going off to the Zinc Works or catching the trolley bus into North Hobart from the train.
Time expired.
The SPEAKER – I remind members that parliament used to sit at 2.00 p.m. because that is when the train got in from Launceston.
