Page 1768 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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Again, I thank my fellow committee members and I commend the report to the Assembly.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (10.17): I would also like to thank my fellow committee members and thank Ms Bresnan in this case for the difficult job that she had as chairperson of this committee. I acknowledge the fact that this was a complex and often politically charged and emotionally charged committee inquiry. At various stages it did get heated and I think that the committee, but in particular Ms Bresnan, bore the brunt of that. I would just like to acknowledge that that was a difficult job for her and in this case I think she actually did it pretty well. Obviously, I would like to thank the secretariat for the support that we got on this committee.
On 7 April the Canberra Times published an article by Diana Streak, titled “The fight goes on for the Fitters Workshop”. At the end of that article Ms Streak observed:
… the issue is not simply a bitch fight between musicians and print artists. It’s a complex story that if handled with vision and courage could transform the Kingston Foreshore into a world-class arts precinct.
A little earlier in the article Ms Streak commented:
The lacklustre performance of arts minister Joy Burch has done little to inspire confidence of an unambiguous outcome.
Mr Speaker, I think that those two quotes sum up the fundamental reasons that we had this inquiry. We have a government that has made decisions without due process. We have a government that has sought to develop the Kingston arts precinct piecemeal and without a holistic master plan. We have a government that has failed to engage in any sort of proper community consultation and we have a government that has deliberately locked segments of the community out of any consultation process. Even the Old Bus Depot Markets, a key and longstanding stakeholder in the future of the Kingston arts precinct, has been ignored.
We have a government that has dismissed the considerable heritage values of the Fitters Workshop. We have a government that has ignored important and relevant factors in its decision-making process, including advice from its own officials. We have a government that has ignored important new information, that of the acoustic qualities of the Fitters Workshop, discovered almost by accident. Although I think it is true that those acoustic qualities were discovered almost by accident, it does not make them any less valid.
We have a government that has led Megalo Print Studio + Gallery up a garden path that leads to nothing more than a black hole. And we have a government that has said Megalo could be in the Fitters Workshop in August of this year when that was never going to be the case. Indeed, Mr Speaker, I suggest to you that this government perhaps knew it was never going to be the case.
We have a government that is too proud to admit that it has been wrong. On top of that, we have had successive arts ministers that have, at best, been lacklustre in their
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