Friday began with the Premier Colin Barnett’s morning tea, followed by a Community Forum, all put on by the Member for Scarborough Liza Harvey. At the Community Forum Mr Barnett spoke for around an hour, emphasizing that we’re living through ‘a moment in history…a 1 in 100 year cycle’ of rebuilding Perth.
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The Premier touched on local issues including: the Scarborough Beach beachfront; local traffic; Observation City redevelopment; and the Stirling City Centre development.
Questions from the community extended this discussion to: the Stirling Master Plan; shopping hours; public transport; underground power; and cycle paths or walkways.
Other areas covered were: the Perth waterfront; the Kings Park/Perth link; the east side precinct; the economy (e.g. links to China); Social issues; Health (e.g. Fiona Stanley hospital and the new children’s hospital); Education; Iron Ore ports; Uranium exports; the Mining Tax and red tape.
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The discussion was intermittently interrupted with a round of baritone ‘here, here’s’, which instantly transported me into the backrow of a musty Rumpole of the Bailey or Yes Minister setting.
As The Ponder Room is apolitical, we’ll bypass the political questions and go to the pressing issues that you really wanted to know….
There were ’12 kilometres’ of sausages provided for the Queens BBQ.
The Queen was the one who actually came up with the idea of the BBQ
A lot of the sausages weren’t eaten, as people wouldn’t give up a good spot for a sausage.
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According to a CHOGM representative from the Maldives, they ‘don’t have sharks,’ but if they did ‘they’d just swim up and kiss you’.
The food served at the morning tea included home made scones and sandwiches.
The front row seats at the Community Forum were actual seats, much more comfortable than the benches people perched on at Perth Fashion Festival. Though to be fair the PFF bottoms were probably a tad slimmer and thus more able to cope better.
The front row participants at the Community Forum were slightly less preened than those at the PFF.
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The goodie bag contained the latest community newsletter and a CPR sheet….somewhat different from the PFF goodie bag. I must admit the CPR sheet had me a little concerned about the mornings proceedings. Were they expecting trouble at question time?
The dress code….
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Business suits (mostly dark), school uniforms (thankfully restricted to the school kids), stiff collared check shirts (but only if you were a male pensioner), flannel shirts (sad but true), pretty frocks and thankfully no tracksuits.
And the answer to the most asked question was either ….2050, 2030, 2013 or next year…the question…
….When?
Big congrats to the organisers for such a well run event, including the question time where everyone showed respect for one another….which has me pondering…..maybe we are enterning a new 100 year cycle?
2 Comments
Did they really describe it as 12km of sausages? I was ahead of my time then because as a kid when my grandmother and I played shops I always asked for sausages in kilometres instead of kilograms 🙂
I am impressed, if it’s true, that the Queen came up with the barbie idea herself.
Just as well you were playing and she hadn’t sent you to the corner store 🙂
Yep that’s what he said.