Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The voice of onion eating is exposed on the other side of politics. The strawberry festival now known as RedFest was held last weekend. If you can talk about too much of a good thing, half a tonne of strawberries was consumed—that must come very, very close. A long history, one of the longest Australian outer metropolitan festivals, RedFest was a huge success once again.

It goes right back to 1958, the home of Bill Airey, to raise money for the local school of arts hall and was later moved to Victoria Point when there was a glut of strawberries—that is the kind of glut you want. The RedFest has continued ever since with great acts on the Saturday night.

It is probably most famous for the world-renowned strawberry-eating competition. I will say as a local: don't try it as a politician—the images they snap are not consistent with re-election, particularly strawberries and cream.

On less of a festival note and more to the future, the universities of the future are one day finding their way to Redlands. Congratulations to ACMA and Airservices Australia for divesting themselves of two significant parcels of land, communicating directly as their legislation allows them to both the state government and our local Redland City Council about freeing this land up for community use and potentially something very special within Brisbane—that is, another university campus within 30 minutes of our city centre.

It has been a nine-year campaign. I congratulate both authorities for assiduously getting us to this point. I wish Mayor Karen Williams and the Redland City Council ever success in bringing this project to fruition.

See this speech in context