Page 2745 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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The other problem is the issue of public liability insurance for arts organisations. I raised this in annual reports hearings. The government said it would follow it up. We requested the government to look into extending cheaper insurance to arts groups, just as the Treasury has looked into this and is extending it to community organisations. The responses from the estimates hearing make it clear to me that nothing has been done on this issue. It still needs to be pursued. I note that the Canberra musicians club is doing some work in this area, but it is an area where the government could quite usefully and positively intervene, as it has done for other community organisations.
I also want to mention the issue of board membership of arts organisations. I have argued before that the government needs to look at the onerous requirement relating to conflict of interest, requiring that people who have done any kind of paid work for the organisation cannot be part of the board.
Last year’s estimates committee asked that this process be reviewed. I understand from this year’s estimates process that the government has new governance procedures for key arts organisations requiring office bearers of boards to be independent of business management and/or artistic relationships with organisations, and that a majority of board members should also be independent.
In my view this is a significant improvement. It brings it into line with what is done with corporate governance normally in the private sector. It still has some degree of stricture in terms of independent governance, but it does allow organisations to include valuable people on the board who would otherwise have to be excluded and whose loss could be very negative for the organisation. We will keep a watching brief on this issue to ensure that arts organisations operate effectively under the new rules.
Moving now to business and industry development, I was very pleased to hear that the green economy paper is to be released for public comment next month. I call it the green economy paper because, of course, that is what it was called in the Labor-Green agreement, which was the genesis of the paper.
I believe, however, that the government has decided to rename it the clean economy paper, but either way I hope to see it and I hope that it is going to give the ACT a boost in shifting our spending towards a more sustainable economic base. I regret that the government did not release the UCan-commissioned paper before this year’s budget because it could have been a useful input into the budget.
I hope that the process will speed up enough so that the paper will in fact drive some changes for next year’s budget. I hope that this paper identifies key industry support and incentive proposals as well as a training plan to identify the key areas which we need to introduce into our many levels of tertiary education and apprenticeships to ensure that we have sufficient skills in our workforce to run the industries which we need for a more sustainable, cleaner and greener future.
This paper and the strategy which comes out of it generally will be very important in the coming years as we adapt our budget and, indeed, our whole territory’s activities to ensure that we meet our reduced greenhouse gas emissions targets. Strengthening
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