Page 4238 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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the more people-based, ephemeral and more messy types of arts—for instance, Music for Everyone. Their programs are full, as I understand it, and there is certainly a need for more things like that. Anchor, which is my local art gallery, given I live in Downer, is probably in need of some more support, and I am very glad to hear from Dr Bourke that we are going to have some more artists in residence at the Watson Arts Centre. Being a Downer resident, that is very close to home and a place I visit mildly often because of its location.
Moving along to what I would like to add to Dr Bourke’s motion after paragraph (1)(d), I refer to the government mismanagement of the consultation process regarding the Fitters Workshop. Whatever you may feel should be the result, I appreciate there is not community consensus, and, to an extent, that is all I have to say. It has been incredibly unfortunate that we have a heritage-listed building—to its credit the government has restored it—and we have the situation where multiple groups want to use it and some groups believing this is a unique facility. It is really unfortunate that we have not managed to have a win-win here. I believe a win-win is possible. It seems that the government made a decision before it was aware of the acoustic issues, which was fair enough, but the government possibly needed to reconsider the issue with the new information.
Paragraph (1)(f) refers to multiple reports into arts and live music in Canberra and the lack of substantive government action in response to these reports. We can all list lots of reports, and Dr Bourke talked at some length about the Loxton report. I would probably be more tempted to speak at some length about the Standing Committee on Planning, Public Works and Territory and Municipal Services inquiry into live community events. Mr Coe, Ms Porter and I put quite an amount of our time into this. It took a couple of years, because there was a huge amount of community interest. We did a substantial report with, from memory, 43 recommendations, and the very limited take-up by the government of the recommendations has been really disappointing. We have a lot of reports, but what we have not got is quite as much action.
Another specific area where we are missing on action is shortage of purpose-built venues for dance rehearsal and performance in Canberra. I will leave Mrs Dunne to speak on paragraph (2) in Dr Bourke’s motion. I do not feel any particular need to critique or otherwise the Liberals’ policy.
Coming to the things that Dr Bourke calls for, he is asking the government to report back in 12 months. We are now in September. In a year’s time it is going to be a month before the election, so I am not really quite sure what Dr Bourke had in mind in terms of that reporting date. I do not believe the Assembly will be sitting. I think we need to change that reporting date, and that is what I have in paragraph (2)(e)—report back to the Assembly within six months. It is not well written; it should have been about the whole thing, but you get my point, even if I have not written it correctly. Reporting back in 12 months does not make sense given the political realities in front of us.
As to paragraph (3)(b), obviously the Greens are generally in favour of consultation. My only comment would be that there has been an awful lot of consultation and we need action on some of the recommendations, not just consultation. Paragraph (3)(c)
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