Canadian Heritage committee  Of course, but if they wanted to have the centenary brand, then funding from the national council was one way of supporting their events.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'd have to take that on notice, I think.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't have a number. I'd be happy to try to dig one up for you. My impression is that it was a small proportion of the overall spending. There was an Australia week. We had some travelling art festivals and exhibitions in Asia. The Australian feature during Winterlude was esse

Canadian Heritage committee  I think all governments are sensitive about charges of being guilty of using national commemorations for party political purposes.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's very rare, I know--

Canadian Heritage committee  --but even in my country it has been known to happen occasionally. In this case, I think the issue was really to get away from a celebration that could have been interpreted as giving undue weight to the particular views of a particular political party or a particular element of

Canadian Heritage committee  As in Canada, our federal government very rarely has the same political complexion as our state and territory governments. We have a mixture of parties representing us. So any federal-state cooperative project has to be, by definition, a political compromise. Once that compromise

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. I mean, without boring you with Australian history, in many ways Sydney is the focal point. It was the place where white settlement began, and the rest of the country was settled from Sydney, effectively. That's a historical fact, but in any major celebration, we have to b

Canadian Heritage committee  Merci. There were a number of events, some officially part of the centenary, and others that were what I might describe as unofficial events at the time of the centenary. Many universities, for example, hosted conferences, conventions, and symposia looking at Australian history.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't have any right now. The only one I've been given information on was the event in Townsville, which is in northern Queensland. Northern Queensland has a particular cultural environment, if I could put it that way. The idea of the gathering there was to celebrate, if you

Canadian Heritage committee  In many cases, yes, but not in every case. In some of the individual projects at the community level, the communities were free to put forward proposals for funding from the national council. In many cases they were approved, provided they came within the guidelines and the crite

Canadian Heritage committee  The impact in a concrete sense was, as I mentioned, the railways and some of the concrete projects that were built during the centenary or constructed at the time of the centenary. They were, if you like, tangible results from the year. I'll leave it to others to make the case

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't think I would even bother to venture a personal opinion on how you should run your centenary.

Canadian Heritage committee  I mentioned the New Dawn ceremony that took place in Alice Springs. I think that was probably the keynote signature event, if you like. It was a deliberate attempt to not have a signature event in Sydney. That was because there was a concern that with the Olympics and with the bi

Canadian Heritage committee  We worked hard with the different aboriginal communities across the country, from the initial advisory committee report, which made engagement with the aboriginal community a very prominent part of its work, all the way through to the work of the national council. There was dir