Page 547 - Week 02 - Thursday, 21 February 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
used to promote the Canberra Festival and on display for approximately six to eight weeks of the year. This went on until 1988. During this time there were strict guidelines for the use of the structure. However, according to the representatives of the Canberra Festival:
... these guidelines have been increasingly ignored.
They go on to say, as set out in paragraph 2.2 of the report:
The original guidelines were: permission for a mural would only be given to events which were seen of major community significance and the use of the site was to be only temporary. The design of the mural was to be clearly a "work of art" with no advertising component (dates being permissible) and with no commercial signage. The design should clearly not be an "advertisement" while it could promote an event.
Until 1988 the mural was held in place by temporary scaffolding and, as I said earlier, only on display for approximately six to eight weeks of the year. That is what it should have been returned to.
Members are, of course, aware of the Floriade festival and its success over the past three years. It is also a significant tourism event on the Canberra calendar. I would consider it as appropriate as the Canberra Festival, and therefore it would be, I believe, beneficial to have it promoted by that mural, held in place by temporary scaffolding.
Mr Speaker, I do not want to go into the reasons why it became a permanent structure. There is probably no doubt that it happened by default. But why was the mural not returned to its original form? The committee was not able to obtain any reason other than that after the decision to put it in place for the entire year in 1988 - the bicentennial year - someone decided to cement it into the ground rather than leave it on temporary scaffolding, and since then it has remained. There is no doubt - and this was certainly substantiated by the great majority of the submissions received by the committee - that the permanent structure should be removed now; but it really should have been removed in 1988, and the original intention of the mural returned. Just because a mistake was made it should have been rectified, and certainly not left as it has been.
As I said earlier, the great majority of the submissions received by the committee argued for its removal. Unfortunately, and this certainly became clear during the latter stages of this inquiry, I believe that public hearings should have been held. It was difficult to ascertain whether those from the community were aware of and understood the original intention - an intention which
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .