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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1779 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

I was lobbied by some members of the arts community in the initial instance and by members who had some concerns about it, but I also have been lobbied for some time by people who support this piece of legislation. In the most recent round of those discussions, it was mentioned to me that one of the concerns about delaying this legislation is that we have the Playhouse - and I watch it go up from my office - and the Cultural Centre well under way; and to have a body in place to handle these venues would make very good sense. By delaying, we will lose momentum. That concept of momentum carries quite a deal of weight with me. I know that members would recognise the importance of momentum in an election campaign. That is when we would be most conscious of it. If in an election campaign you start to lose momentum and you cannot crank that up again, then you do have problems.

I actually rethought my position as to whether or not I would support a delay in this legislation. In the end, I felt that, even though I think it will actually have an impact on momentum - and I think that is a problem - the case for consultation outweighed the importance of that. I hope that the people the Minister appoints to the body, when the legislation, even if it is modified somewhat, gets up, are such that the momentum will be able to be picked up again, because I think these will be very exciting venues. It is very exciting, and I think that sort of excitement will generate its own momentum, in that it will provide an opportunity which I think not only the Minister but this Assembly as a whole will have pride in.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for Arts and Heritage) (4.43), in reply: I thank members for their comments in this debate. I think it is important to have the in-principle debate today and to come back on another occasion to consider the detail stage. I understand amendments have been prepared by Mr Wood, and I look forward to seeing them and talking to him about them. I am a bit disappointed that, of the people who spoke in this debate, only Mr Moore acknowledged that not only is this legislation controversial in some respects - and I acknowledge that it certainly is - but also it is legislation that does provide a tremendous opportunity to reconfigure the way in which the Territory structures its arts activities.

Mr Wood: So, it is more than bricks and mortar then?

MR HUMPHRIES: I am talking about bricks and mortar. You cannot ignore the fact that bricks and mortar are a very important part of the way the ACT provides for cultural activities in relation to the life of the Territory. Unfortunately, perhaps, we are tied to conducting most drama inside theatres, most concerts inside concert halls and most art exhibitions inside art galleries and museums, and that is a constraint upon us, to some extent, which we need to acknowledge but view as an opportunity to think about in a different way.

I emphasise very emphatically that the Canberra Cultural Authority is not a device to set up a semi-Stalinist structure, as one critic described it, to take over control of all arts-related activity in the ACT and run it from some centralised arts bureaucrat's office in a way which dictates what would be fashionable, what would be culturally acceptable and what would be politically correct. That is not the objective of this exercise. It is essentially an attempt to be able to use cultural assets, principally bricks and mortar, in a much more strategic way than we have in the past.

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