Page 203 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
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Finally, I certainly support - and I suppose that this is the only recommendation that I support unqualifiedly - the upgrading of the Playhouse, because it involves no recurrent funding. I have said all along that I would have preferred to see this entire premium put into activities that did not require ongoing funding. I certainly welcome the $5m allocation to the Playhouse and I look forward to at least that aspect - - -
Mr Lamont: Do you think it should have been more?
MR CORNWELL: To respond to Mr Lamont's interjection, if more than $5m was needed for a 600- to 650-seat new or upgraded theatre on the Playhouse site, I would not have been averse to that. I believe that the Playhouse serves a very important role here in the ACT and I also believe that, unlike some other theatres, it has a chance of being viable.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (10.51): Madam Speaker, like other members, I congratulate the committee on its report. With them, I welcomed the report, its recommendations and the consideration that went into it. This report has been part of a long process and I draw the attention of members once again to the work of the select committee to which Mr Lamont's committee needed to pay attention. That was a long process and I think it had a significant role in the flowthrough of the recommendations. I think the whole process has obviously been a long one but it has been a good one with a good result.
I am not sure that Mr Cornwell understands that process. The first comment that I am going to respond to is his reference to evidence to the committee that the operation of the community theatre in Childers Street, as distinct from the Playhouse and the Canberra Theatre, was going to cost some $500,000 a year, whereas an answer I had provided to a question of Mr Cornwell's was $150,000. I do not know what he should find so strange about that. We have evidence given to a committee; we have a proponent for that theatre arguing a case for the theatre, and he argued effectively because the committee recommended some funds for that community theatre. It was a project, I should point out, that was a quick initiative of this Government. Evidence to a committee is just that. It is evidence and it is not to be taken as more than that. It may be regarded as absolutely accurate or it may be regarded as someone else's point of view.
Mr Cornwell wants an explanation of the difference. The Government has looked at the costings for running this place and we have come up with a figure and I do not think we will be very far out at the end of the day. Time will tell. It certainly is a great advantage to that theatre that we can put some of the casino premium into lighting and equipment. In the first instance, that theatre was going to be fairly sparsely furnished in that respect. Now it will kick off, I think, with perhaps a full complement of the necessary equipment and that will be a very distinct advantage.
There was another point that Mr Cornwell made that rather surprised me. He said, and I will put two comments together, but it is very much the intent of what he said, "It is not up to the Government to distort the committee's recommendation".
Mr Cornwell: That is right.
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