Page 3833 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 30 November 2021
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I am proud to say that this budget also provides necessary support to CMAG, the Canberra Museum and Gallery, with nearly $1 million for a package of works at CMAG to improve work health and safety standards and accessibility, together with a further package of works and initiatives to enhance CMAG’s presence and profile on London Circuit and Civic Square, to support activation of the precinct.
CMAG is a hidden gem. It is well known to many of us in this place and has a dedicated audience and visitors, but we are keen to grow that. I have been firm in saying that CMAG might be known to us as a hidden gem but it should just be a gem. Let us not hide it away; let us expose it as much as possible to the Canberra community and to our domestic, and eventually international, visitors.
CMAG will benefit from funding provided in this budget for an upgrade to glazing and roof repairs in the North Building. This is an important upgrade to ensure that CMAG can maintain museum climate control standards to support the collection that is the story of Canberra.
Together, these initiatives will support the CFC in making a major contribution to the ACT arts sector’s recovery from the pandemic and will drive us forward in our ambition to become Australia’s arts capital.
I thank Ms Lawder for her acknowledgement of the outgoing CFC CEO, Ms Harriet Elvin AM, and I want to add my voice in acknowledging her incredible contribution over 24 years. We will miss Harriet dearly. She has been a source of support and guidance for me and a number of previous arts ministers, but also we need to hold a torch to her leadership in this sector. She has supported women and she has ensured that the Canberra theatre continues to thrive even during the most difficult of circumstances. We bid her a fond farewell. We have been incredibly grateful that, since she announced that she intended to resign, she stayed on while we did our recruitment process. Indeed, she went into a lockdown which affected the Canberra theatre and cultural facilities right across Canberra yet again.
We have been so grateful that Harriet has been such a firm part of our city and our city’s story. She will continue to be, I am happy to say. I know that she will remain on call, but, as Ms Lawder also recognised, we very much look forward to welcoming Mr Gordon Ramsay into the role in a bit under two weeks. I look forward to working with him in a very different capacity. His enthusiasm for our cultural facilities is well known, and I know that he will be getting straight to work.
This is the last time that I intend to speak on the budget, so I want to take this opportunity to put on the record my thanks to the staff across all the directorates and agencies which I have responsibility for and engagement with, including Economic Development, artsACT, the Cultural Facilities Corporation, Access Canberra, the Better Regulation Taskforce, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Justice and Community Safety Directorate, the Human Rights Commission and Major Projects Canberra. I will speak more about the year in my adjournment speech later this week, but I feel enormously privileged to work with such professional, hardworking staff whose years have thrown them some extraordinary challenges. Without exception,
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