Page 2874 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 October 1992
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appropriately focus the community's attention on the task at hand. Finally, Madam Speaker, I have asked that the committee report to the Assembly on its findings by Thursday, 10 December 1992, thus enabling the ACT Government to meet its timetable for the announcement of a decision before the end of the year. Madam Speaker, I commend the motion to the Assembly.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (10.42): Madam Speaker, the Government supports this proposal. We do so on the ground that it should provide some update on the views that were widely and clearly established during the course of the Select Committee on Cultural Facilities and Activities. I would remind the house that the report of that committee is still very new. It was tabled here in this Assembly on the first day of the new Government, the last day of the Alliance Government, and that was in June 1991. It is not long ago; so it is still very much a current report.
Ms Szuty makes a fair point that this will provide an opportunity for people to express their ideas. I prefer to see it as an updating of ideas, because that committee carried on its task for, I think, about 18 months. There is not an arts group or a related group in Canberra, I think, that we did not approach. You should go back into the submissions to that inquiry. They are extensive and most of them are excellent; so I believe that the work of the PDI Committee on this matter has been fairly substantially covered. Certainly, the views we had were wide ranging. The committee is also to take note of the Labor Party's commitment which was in our election policy. I am sure that the Assembly is well aware of that.
A further factor in this is the work of the Cultural Council. A little time ago I had advice from the Cultural Council which established, as they saw it, the principles which should be used as the Government came to its decision. I had spoken to the council about this matter. They were aware of the Government's policy and the history of it, and they came forward with that proposal which, as it were, gave guidelines for the Government as decisions were taken. I have also, in the light of this motion and other events, asked the council to give me more detail as to their views on the use of the casino premium, and they will do so by the date I have given them, 1 December. The Cultural Council is the body that we established to provide advice to the Government on matters cultural. It has been working very well and I will certainly respect in the future, as I have in the past, the advice they give me.
Madam Speaker, I think there is one other point I should make, and it goes back to the whole casino debate from the time it was first launched, rather optimistically I think, from the Federal Parliament. The attraction that was presented to make the casino more appealing to some people who may have had reservations about it was that it would provide for cultural facilities, and they were to be across the road at the Theatre Centre. In the event, the select committee, as it assessed the needs of Canberra, determined that the original proposal for a massive theatre complex was simply unsustainable. The premium was not going to deliver that amount of money anyway. Further, the ACT community, by its record of attendances, had shown that we would seldom fill a 2,000-seat theatre and that maybe the greater need was for a smaller theatre. I would refer you to both reports of the select committee, because there was an interim report on that matter specifically.
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