Page 1219 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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assume; to virtually every aspect of cultural life. Of course, paragraph (b) also brings in libraries, which are another broader definition of cultural work or cultural life.
I suspect that any one aspect of that could absorb an entire committee's deliberations for some weeks. But we, perhaps, will have to be discriminating about exactly what parts of that we take as the more important aspects of this inquiry. "The extent to which library facilities meet the needs of the community" is paragraph (b) of this motion, and naturally an entire inquiry could be devoted to the adequacy of library services in the ACT. I hope that we focus, principally, on the needs of the library services in the central part of Canberra. That is certainly what I see as the most important aspect of the inquiry. But again that could be something we focus on in the committee, rather than attempting to cover every aspect of library services in Canberra.
Some of the ground referred to here has already been covered, to some extent, by the Select Committee on the Establishment of a Casino, and certainly we touched, as Mr Wood referred to, on a great many of these issues, particularly the lyric theatre and the possibilities that presented to both sustaining and enhancing cultural life in Canberra. I think that, if anything, our inquiries in that respect whetted our appetite for more extensive probing of what issues arise there. I hope that we will achieve that. That is a matter on which I hope we can again dovetail our work with what has already been done.
I notice in paragraph (c) of the reference that we refer to "priorities for determining the nature, size, funding and use of future cultural facilities", including those proposed on section 19. We do not refer, in those particular criteria, to location. We are talking about nature, size, funding and use, but not location. I read into that some concession that the decision to locate some cultural facilities on section 19 is one that has not seriously been taken issue with at this point, but that the nature and size and other aspects of those are yet to be determined and will be determined by this committee.
That, in turn, leads to a final problem, I determine, in all of this, and that is the reporting date and how that would dovetail with what is being proposed for the works on section 19. I am not sure exactly what the Government has in mind, but it would not surprise me if tenders were sought and successful tenderers were determined for section 19 some time before 30 April 1990. That then raises the question of how this committee's work, with respect to what should go on section 19, would fit in with that timetable. I hope that at the very least the problems might be overcome in this area by having the committee consult with the Government on its work to date before any final decision is made on the nature of what should occur or be placed on section 19.
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