Richard Amery's speech at the CANRI launch

Welcoming speech

Welcome to our ministerial colleagues, the Deputy Premier, Andrew Refshauge, the Minister for Fisheries and Mines, Eddie Obeid, to all the distinguished guests, not only from Government agencies, but virtually the Who’s Who of natural resource management around the State. I’m really pleased to see so many people, familiar faces, who have travelled a long way to be at this prestigious, and I think very important launch. The Deputy Premier is going to do the honours, on behalf of the whole Government, but before he does those honours and speaks to you, I just want to say to Paul and everybody involved with it, I think everybody will be extremely impressed.

Today we have a couple of speakers following: John Cobb, president of the NSW Farmers’ Association; Kathy Ridge, from the Nature Conservation Council; and John Dengate. And, not even knowing what they may say, I might say that over the last few years that I’ve been involved in portfolios that relate to natural resources, one of the issues that always comes up, no matter what part of the State I’m involved in, is the different sorts of information and data that’s available from different government agencies.

Whether one government agency is going to be represented, which one’s going to be excluded, whether the science is right, how do river management committees and various types of boards and management committees that we set up around the State access all of this information?

And, if it wasn’t for me being the technical person that I am and able to answer those sort of questions, and I think today we may be seriously addressing those concerns, coming up from a lot of our natural resource people and [others]. Obviously the managers, the decision-makers, and the people making a lot of these decisions discussing with rural communities and the like are major players.

I understand everybody from students, to involved people with a special interest in it, will be able to access this information. It will be available virtually to everybody, which is quite an exciting concept.

So with that, I just want to again thank everybody for being here. I have a bit of a technology week, and my staff will be laughing for me to be involved in a technology week, many of them are unkind enough to say that I’ve just perfected the ballpoint pen and here I am talking about technology. But as a bit of an aside, if I could indulge myself here… In my own electorate, in western Sydney, in Mount Druitt, is a TAFE college, which has been expanding in an evolutionary sort of way since 1978, and yesterday John Aquilina, the Minister for Education, officially opened an Information Technology Unit. …the Information Technology Unit at the TAFE at Mount Druitt started off in 1990 with 60 students, and last year was bursting at the seams with 1,300 students. That was at one unit in one TAFE in the broader western Sydney. I’ve no doubt every other institution, universities and the like, would probably repeat those sort of figures. So, it’s that sort of information, that technology, that movement going on now is just having such rapid growth, I think, it’s just mind-boggling to many of us. Now, I know it has nothing to do with natural resource management, but I just thought I’d just relay that interesting aspect to just how our education facilities are now teaching and training people in this area of information technology.

It’s on that point I should give an apology for the Minister for Information Technology, Kim Yeadon, who, among other portfolio interests, is the minister involved with driving reform within government departments and agencies and, I think, is the first minister, certainly from a New South Wales point of view, one of the very first ministers we’ve had in the country who actually has a role in information technology. And today’s launch is just an example of how information technology is going to, I believe, help us all do, not only a better job, but get better outcomes.

So, with those opening comments, I understand my next job is to introduce …the Deputy Premier of New South Wales and Minister for Planning, Andrew Refshauge, who probably needs no introduction here, and I want to thank Andrew for coming along because, whilst I’ve been involved in many launches of websites and the like on behalf of Agriculture and Land and Water Conservation and so on, the way we’ve been expanding the way that we provide information to our client base, so to speak, we’ve had Extension Officers out there in years gone by—we still do—but we are actually expanding the way we get information to either farmers or conservation groups, committees, and so on. And I’ve been launching and pressing buttons, at formal launches of many of these projects within my own two agencies, but today is a recognition that it’s the whole of government, and that’s why we have the Deputy Premier here today, in the role that he has here today, to actually represent the whole of government because I understand it’s about a dozen agencies involved in putting this information together. So it’s with that, it gives me great pleasure on your behalf, and on behalf of everybody involved in natural resource management, to introduce to you the Deputy Premier of New South Wales, Dr Andrew Refshauge. I ask him to speak to you and, I think, undertake some official functions: clicking, button-pressing, or launching here today. I’ll leave that up to him to explain to you. Thank you.
[Next speaker]

Closing speech

[Previous speaker]
Well, that about wraps it up... First off, to my ministerial colleagues, Andrew Refshauge, the Deputy Premier, to Eddie Obeid, and all those departmental people involved here, I have to thank them all, not only for coming along, but for being involved very strongly in this whole project, and I just share the views of those speakers previously about the great potential for this. I mean, what’s here now is quite exciting; the potential for it, of course, is even more so.

Again to our speakers, John Dengate, Kathy Ridge and John Cobb, I’d like to thank them for their support and words of endorsement here today. Significantly, I mean, you’ve got two organisations who just spoke to you one from the NSW Farmers’ Association; one from the Nature Conservation Council. That, in itself, is significant, not in the fact that they do this on many occasions, they speak in forums together, but both of those organisations, some may have said, in years gone by, from diametrically opposed points of view on how natural resources should be managed, are seeing that they are mutual beneficiaries of this sort of system. I’d like to thank all of those, along with John Dengate, for their involvement. I understand we’ve got some other sort of demonstrations that could be on, for people who would like to have a look at that, and I understand there is also a public forum at 3 pm at the State Library, to talk about how CANRI will operate. Thanks again. Enjoy a drink and whatever is available.

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