Page 201 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
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That is a substantial amount of money and it appears to me that it is at odds with an answer I received from the Minister for the Arts to question No. 18. In that answer he gave the estimated annual ongoing cost. He stated:
... a likely budget for a full year's operation of the Theatre will be $150,000. This may not be attainable in the first year, when staff costs would be kept low to compensate for lower income.
I put it to you that $150,000 in a full year's operation is substantially different from an operating deficit of half a million dollars for the first five years. Perhaps we will get some confirmation of this when Mr Lamont responds. The $7m allocated to cultural and heritage facilities, which I would hope would be located in the North Building, really is a little too vague for me to comment upon further, save to express concern for the recurrent costs that I mentioned in relation to other projects.
There is also the Government's obvious intention, Madam Speaker, to distort the committee's recommendations as to the use of these facilities. I have spoken outside this place in relation to this matter, but it is worth repeating it for Hansard. The committee, at paragraph 3.42, indicated that this city based cultural and heritage facility would be used with rehearsal and administrative space for a number of groups such as a writers centre, the Australian Garden History Society and the National Trust. The report states:
As well, the Committee considers a city-based cultural and heritage facility should encompass the types of uses envisaged by the Cultural Council -
that is something set up by this Labor Government -
namely:
within that facility we would envisage exhibition spaces and here it would pick up on a regional gallery concept, exhibition functions and so on, but defined in a way that reflects a genuine local and regional cultural flavour, space for collection, display of community histories, the documentation, education and interpretive functions, which would present the full range of artistic and cultural diversity of Canberra to ourselves ... and to our visitors.
This is interpreted by the Chief Minister in her tabling statement on the Government's response to the Assembly report as:
The establishment of a regional art gallery and heritage centre in section 19 will provide a further exciting and readily accessible focus for this city.
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