Page 2446 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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Mrs Grassby: Mr Acting Speaker, I rise to adjourn this debate to another day.
MR ACTING SPEAKER: No, I think we need speakers from the committee first.
MRS NOLAN (4.56): As this report has been around for some time, in fact, it was handed down in June, it is perhaps inappropriate to be speaking to it today, but there are a couple of comments that I would like to make. As has already been stated, the report was handed through to the Speaker some time ago, but this is the first opportunity for it to be tabled in the Assembly.
The fencing of Stage '88 first came up last year, as Mr Jensen has already stated, during the Estimates Committee report when it was discovered that an amount of $177,000 left of the Commonwealth initial grant of $1.4m was to be expended primarily on a fence round Stage '88. The Estimates Committee requested that the Government review its decision relating to the fencing of Stage '88 and develop alternative proposals for the funds, obviously while still remaining consistent with the original grant.
In its response to the Estimates Committee the former Government agreed with that recommendation and stated it would advise the Assembly of the outcome of the review. However, by March this year the present Minister, Mr Humphries, wrote to the committee as we have already heard, and the committee then took the question of fencing Stage '88 as a formal reference.
As is stated in the committee report, there are many issues that are unresolved. They are listed at 1.7 of the report and I think it is probably relevant that I should name them. They are: lack of public consultation; the apparent haste with which the project was proceeding; the absence of costing for the use of the facility; the lack of information on the competitive position of Stage '88 in an increasingly crowded market for commercial venues; the vague estimates of the income likely to be generated by commercial use of Stage '88; and the practical limitations and the security problems of the use of such a facility for popular entertainment.
I must also say that at this stage I was concerned as a member of the committee that only a small number of submissions was received - in fact, there were only six. As we have already heard from Mr Jensen, three of those supported the proposal to fence Stage '88 but two of those really only offered qualified support for such a proposal.
I do not believe that the two basic arguments put forward in support of the proposal, they being that the fence was an original unit of the original proposal for a music bowl in Commonwealth Park as a Commonwealth bicentennial gift to the people of the ACT, and that the fence was seen as a way of ensuring that at least some of the running costs
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