Geoff included the arachnids, only among the etc. I am waiting for Stuart Harris to suggest his Peacock Spider.
Mark wrote:
“It is about time that people like Andrew Barr and all ACT politicians took note and thought outside the box and used a bit of initiative for a change – why not have some other animal as the ACT’s animal emblem.”
Well I think we see why it is such an open ended question.
Philip
From: Geoffrey Dabb [
Sent: Wednesday, 13 December, 2017 5:28 PM
To:
Subject: FW: [canberrabirds] Faunal emblem for the ACT
The confusion among potential emblem-proposers is quite understandable. It has not been explained why the ACT should have a mammal emblem just because other jurisdictions have decided they need a mammal emblem.
About 20 years ago the ACT govt decided it needed a ‘faunal emblem’ and the debate centred around the Gang-gang, the Corroboree Frog and, as I recall, a third candidate that might have been the Earless Dragon or Golden Sun Moth. All done then I’d hoped.
But no, we now need a mammal emblem as well. Do not suppose for a moment that that will be the end of it.
As I see it, our emblems are at different levels. The Gang-gang is THE FAUNAL EMBLEM. Any other favourite members of the natural world, from whatever category, will be in the nature of sub-emblems. To lend
some order to a rather chaotic process, I offer the below diagram. It would have been so much better, when the original debate took place, if the Chief Minister had said: “Fellow Canberrans, we are about to embark on a search for our faunal emblem. Let
us approach this in a logical fashion that recognises that there are all kinds of creatures out there and we all have our likes and dislikes. First by the end of next month I would like to have a settled preference for (a) a vertebrate or (b) an invertebrate.
If, each month, we calmly and sensibly choose our route past each evolutionary fork we shall, I calculate, have reached a suitable ACT FAUNAL EMBLEM by March next year. If you wish, each non-preferred fork can be given the rank of sub-emblem to avoid having
to make a similar journey on a future occasion. May I give the example ‘Invertebrate Emblem’ without in any way wishing to prejudge the route our steps might take.”
