Susan Oliver, the managing director of the Commission for the Future is to give the second address in the “”Canberra: Face the Nation?” series, the Canberra Business Council announced yesterday.
Her address will be held in the Senate Chamber of Old Parliament House on April 28 from 6 to 7.30pm.
The series began on Tuesday with an address by the chairman of Federal Capital Press of Australia Pty Ltd, publisher of The Canberra Times, Kerry Stokes.
The series is sponsored by the Canberra Business Council, the National Capital Planning Authority, the ACT Government and the University of Canberra. Six lead-up addresses will be given in Canberra by leading Australians with strong Canberra connections and three other addresses will be given in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane before a conference in September at the university which will be addressed by the Prime Minister, Paul Keating; the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson; and the chair of the board of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation, Sir Ninian Stephen, among others.
On Wednesday Mr Stokes said greater investment was needed in the city.
“”To deny Canberra its birthright as a national capital is to undermine the national investment to date,” he said. “”And to starve the city of the trappings of a capital is to strangle and debase its function as the national seat of democracy.”
The chairman of the National Capital Planning Authority, Joe Skrzynski, said the vision of Canberra had to be one beyond politics. More than $2 billion had been invested in the Parliamentary Triangle in bricks and mortar alone. Taxpayers should get an intellectual and physical return for that investment.
He hoped the NCPA would get better funding to fulfil its statutory function to promote Canberra and educate Australians about Canberra.
The vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, Professor Don Aitkin, said the conference and lead-up addresses would expose the strengths and weaknesses of Canberra’s place in the nation _ a timely task.