Page 2116 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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Output 1.5 is arts policy, advice and programs. I am really delighted to see an increase in arts funding. There is both a growing activity base of arts in the ACT and an increasing need to fund professional arts activity at an adequate level. This boost to the arts fund is a welcome addition to available resources, though it is not, in itself, a solution to the challenges faced by the arts in the ACT.
I was disappointed that the ACT government seems to have taken a very passive approach when it comes to exploring long-term solutions to the well-known pressure confronted by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and the Canberra School of Music. When, through a question on notice, I raised the possibility of getting those organisations to work more closely and, therefore, supportively with each other, I was advised, in effect, that it was a matter for them.
Perhaps the ANU is just too big an organisation for the ACT government to even think it could influence. It seems to me, however, that the territory was pretty generous to the ANU in the carve-up of Civic West. It is a shame that we do not seem to have used that leverage to benefit the arts, despite the importance of the ANU’s Institute for the Arts, which includes the School of Music, in our cultural landscape.
I was also dismayed that the ACT Cultural Council, which reputedly provides key arts advice to the ACT government, has nothing to say to the Canberra population or its arts community. When I asked whether the council had a view on a long-term future of professional dance and theatre in this city, I was advised that it did but was not told what it was. So the council has views, but they are all secret or private. I am not sure how valuable or effective it is, despite the quality of the people on it.
I note also that external expertise will be engaged this year to refresh the arts action statement. Once again, it looks like local views might be sought but the actual dialogue and decisions will all stay locked up between government, minister and consultants.
It is interesting to note that it is now clear that the decision to fund a number of arts education projects last year were essentially ad hoc decisions made by the Chief Minister on the basis of arguments put to him by the contract recipients. I am very pleased that the minister for the Arts is interested in the arts but I am disappointed that there appears to be little transparent dialogue about priorities and directions.
On the penultimate point of project facilitation, there is probably enough here to discuss the notion of project facilitation in the context of the various power station proposals. The debate on the motion of no confidence yesterday made it suddenly desirable for the government to show me a lot of documents that shed a light on government decision making in this area. But in none of those documents did I see a risk analysis which considered climate change impacts, adverse community response, health and environmental impacts or the possible need for or desirability of environmental impact statements—apart, that is, from the ACTPLA document. So I am not sure exactly what the project facilitation output delivers.
One of its measures is about developing and implementing a land supply strategy. It would seem that the broadacre and industrial land supply strategy, at the very least, got tangled up by the sudden exciting prospect of a gas-fired, peaking power station
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