Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, Troy Cassar-Daley, who is from the Grafton community in the electorate of Page, was there performing as well, and he is a great Australian artist.

In finishing—and I have mentioned this before—I will say that it takes great entrepreneurial spirit to do this. Peter had other partners at the start; he now owns the whole thing outright, having bought out the other partners. It takes great entrepreneurial spirit to do this—that whole have-a-go mentality that we love in this chamber and that we want to support. Peter has done a great job with this. He has epitomised that spirit and mentality. He has staff to manage and artists to coordinate. There is the whole logistics of it. It takes place at Tyagarah now, and the physicality of what he has built and manufactured there is wonderful.

As was raised before, the dollar value is in the tens of millions—over $64 million—just in direct input to the local economy from this event. So I congratulate Peter for that.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that—while we are acknowledging Peter and his work on the blues festival—Peter has extended this, and now, at a different time of the year, in October, we have the Boomerang Festival, a wonderful festival which celebrates Indigenous artists. That festival was new last year, and I think it will continue to grow into our community and be another wonderful cultural event in the wider Northern Rivers community.

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