Page 4751 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 20 October 2010
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Culturally—as Mr Barr pointed out by lifting the words “cultural capital” from the report—we have the national icons. But it is not just about the national icons. At, say, a territory level, we have a substantial number of individuals contributing to the national wellbeing through their pursuit of cultural activities. Locally, when you get down to the suburbs, there are people out there who perform their arts and do their craft—whatever it is that they do that adds to the sum of us all. A cultural capital is a significant thing. I used the words “creative capital” several years ago. It is a creative capital as well.
We have got to work on the substance and then we have got to tell people what we do. That is where we are lacking, and that is the point of this motion. There is no strategy. There is no strategy to develop the events. We know that the minister has had this probably for something like 15 months. That is 15 months gone and it is 15 months that contribute to the poor result that is the Loxton report. We know, for instance, that we have a number of national attractions. In 2005 we had a forum here. Those people from the industry who attended the forum had been told by people who had visited Canberra that the area they thought Canberra was deficient in was not having an Aboriginal museum and an Aboriginal gallery—Indigenous history and Indigenous Art. That was top of the list at that forum. We now see the outcome of the National Gallery. It was commenced by the Howard government, which had a strong commitment to the attractions and building Canberra as a national capital.
But I suspect it is not enough. It certainly puts on display some of the art, but think of the tens of thousands of pieces that the gallery has. From an anthropological sense, the Strehlow map of Indigenous people of Australia says there are about 381 tribes. One piece of art from each tribe would fill the gallery in itself, so there is potential there. The Indigenous sections at the National Museum are welcome but, again, there are 381 tribes. It is unique to Australia. We are the nation’s capital. People come here looking for that sort of facility in the nation’s capital and they cannot find enough of it. It was raised when we did the forum in 2004-05. It is important that we keep talking about these issues; otherwise they will go away or they will not occur.
Something that I am particularly interested in is the University of Canberra architectural school. It does a project each year which is often on display at GAD, the Gallery of Australian Design, down at Commonwealth Place. In this year’s project they asked students to design some plans and build a model for a museum of natural history. Again, it is unique to Australia. It is what people come to look for, but we do not celebrate it. If you do not celebrate it, you do not understand it. These are concepts that we could follow through.
I have spoken often about a bushfire museum. The bushfire phenomenon is very much unique to Australia in the way that it occurs. Again, we will not understand it if we do not talk about it and look at it, and we will not remember it. We will repeat the mistakes of the past if we do not remember it.
There are a number of things that can go into such a strategy. I have never asked for the ACT government to fund such a strategy. Ideally, philanthropy and the federal government, assisted by the ACT government, would make these things happen. We
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