Page 3991 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
community, it provides a level of flexibility, and it provides a level of potential innovation at having that sort of corporate structure.
A board can also inspire a sense of purpose that is shared by the board and its stakeholders where people who are on the board and who come from various walks of life in the community really take on board that responsibility and get out there and promote the organisation that they are working for in the course of their ongoing lives.
I am concerned about the struggles of EPIC to progress over recent years. This is demonstrated particularly by the failure to develop a site for low cost accommodation on the land on or around EPIC. The proposals have been on the table for a number of years now, and we have not seen progress. It is still unclear to me why that has not progressed. That is something that I have been trying to research, but in the context of talking about the government and management of these organisations, the question is: has this been a problem of governance or has this been a problem of oversight by the government or a failure by the government to get behind EPIC at times when they have requested either land or capital? These are questions which remain without answers at this point in time.
I know that when we debated this issue in the Assembly the government took the view that some of these negatives could be overcome by the extra coordination and resources support that a government department can offer and that the government has the ability to guide EPIC in a strategic way that perhaps an independent board does not. I wondered at the time of the debate in April why the government cannot offer that support anyway, because it is still a government authority or a territory authority. We are in a situation where it is still a government asset, and yet we are told that the only way the government can provide the real support for this asset that the territory and, therefore, all of us own is if it is within government management. That raises questions about what the government thinks the role of territory authorities is and how this all fits together.
I think Ms Gallagher spoke to this to some extent when she talked about the need for balance. To my mind, there must be some midpoint where EPIC is not set up to fail—I fear that may be a path that we are looking at at the moment—whereby the department—in this case it is TAMS—can still have input into a strategic plan and assist with the implementation of that plan as best as possible. The bottom line is that we want EPIC to succeed. It is a terrific venue, and we do not want to create a situation where it is destined to fail.
Earlier this year, the Greens did form the view that there was value in retaining a board with a range of community input and experience. Our primary concern was to retain a level of community input into the future of EPIC in a diverse, vibrant facility. To that end, we decided not to agree to the abolition of the board and suggested an alternative way forward, the first step of which was to postpone the abolishment of the board for 12 months to assess how it performed under a new portfolio. This came in the context of the minister saying, “Actually, it sat out the back in Treasury for a number of years and has been somewhat neglected. But I’ve got it now in the tourism portfolio, and I’m really passionate about this and I’m going to make it happen.” What we did not expect to see was that the government would then take over the board with senior public servants being appointed to the positions of chair and deputy
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .