Page 5134 - Week 12 - Thursday, 27 October 2011
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decay it was in. Not having any better thoughts they thought, “Okay, this could be offices for us.” When the government was then told that Megalo might be interested in it, I quite understand that they thought that Megalo would be a better tenant than LDA. I do not know whether that is true or not but that is certainly one of the many stories I was told about it. If that is true, that was probably at the time a reasonable decision. What is not reasonable is that, now that there has been public interest identified in it, there has been absolutely no public consultation on this and no outside employment of experts to work on it.
This has been going on for a long time. If you look at the estimates report this year you will find that there were a number of recommendations—recommendations 72, 73 and 74. Recommendation 72 was not agreed. This was where we recommended the ACT government revisit the plans, with the aim of preserving the acoustic qualities of the Fitters Workshop and to co-locate Megalo so that no group was disadvantaged. I would also like to put on the record, as Mrs Dunne did, that this is not about doing anything negative as far as Megalo is concerned. We are all, I think, of a mind in thinking that Megalo would be a good fit for the Kingston arts precinct.
One of the reasons behind my amendments is that something a bit more positive for Megalo needs to be done, noting, as Mrs Dunne noted, that Megalo are going to need accommodation fairly soon. I spoke to Alison Alder this morning. Their lease is until June next year. She seemed to be of the belief that they would quickly be able to move into Kingston. However, she clearly had not read the estimates report. The estimates report says that we are looking at occupation in 2013.
The estimates report said what Mrs Dunne’s motion and my amendments today say. The estimates report recommended the ACT government take no further action in regard to the further use of the Fitters Workshop until the master plan had been completed and presented to the Legislative Assembly. And in saying that, of course, the estimates committee assumed that the master plan would include meaningful consultation.
Interestingly, recommendation 73 of estimates was agreed to in principle by the government. The committee recommended the ACT government develop a master plan for the development of the Kingston arts precinct and present that plan to the Legislative Assembly no later than the first sitting day in December 2011. So it was agreed in principle. I do agree the government is currently doing master planning in the Kingston Foreshore area. What the estimates committee, in our innocence, did not realise was that they would do a master plan and exclude from that process the issue that is of most contention. It was very disappointing to find that the government agreed in principle but not actually 100 per cent in practice. The longer you spend here, the more cynical you get about all the ways that things get moved and manipulated so that we do not get the response that we expected.
After the estimates report, we did come back into the Assembly again. I moved amendments on 21 September to Dr Bourke’s motion on arts. Unfortunately neither the Liberal Party nor the Labor Party supported them. What I had noted was the government mismanagement of the consultation process and what I asked for was a public chronology of the decision-making process and public consultations which
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