Page 2898 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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incorporating Fitters Workshop as a multi-use arts and performance venue; recommendation 4, that the current decision to convert the Fitters Workshop to Megalo print studio be reconsidered and that immediate steps be taken to identify an alternative site for a purpose-built building at the Kingston arts precinct; and recommendation 5, that funding be made available for the converse of Fitters Workshop to be retained for funding the construction of a purpose-built facility for Megalo at the Kingston arts precinct to be retained and applied for that purpose.
What we saw on Tuesday was the minister, who knows that she is on a loser with this, use the cover of the budget to hide a most odious decision. The minister has had at least two opportunities to reconsider this and start again. When Jon Stanhope left the ACT Legislative Assembly, it was quite clear that there was a body of opinion about whether or not putting Megalo in the Fitters Workshop was the best use of the Fitters Workshop. At that time I was saying: “For goodness sake, just do the acoustic report. If the acoustic report comes back and says that it can’t be maintained, if we adjust the building we’ll kill the acoustic et cetera, et cetera, I’ll be satisfied, the community will be satisfied, and we know that we’re making the best possible decision for the future use of Fitters Workshop.”
Jon Stanhope constantly refused to do that, but I had some hope that when Minister Burch became the Minister for the Arts she would say: “Okay, let’s have a clean slate. Let’s draw a line in the sand and let’s look at the evidence.” She liked to talk about an evidence-based approach the other day, but the essential piece of evidence that successive arts ministers have refused to consider is to look at the acoustics.
We eventually got a committee inquiry with the support of Ms Le Couteur and the Greens, and the committee inquiry came at this with a fresh pair of eyes. They came not with any preconceived ideas and they looked at the issues. The first thing they did was commission two independent sets of acoustic engineers to look at the Fitters Workshop. And what did they say? They say things like:
The Fitters Workshop has nearly perfect dimensions for what we in the acoustics business call trouble-free brew modes.
Basically, what that means is that it results in a very even base response and the smoothest long reverberation we have heard in Canberra.
“The smoothest, longest reverberation we have heard in Canberra.” They went on to say:
In the Fitters Workshop, our community discovered a centrally situated space with unique acoustic values which arose by accident over many decades. In this case, we believe we could consider acoustics as a heritage value as much as building materials and architectural style.
They went on to ask the question whether Canberra is able to seize this opportunity and accept it as a boundary space and creatively curate a multi-arts program that builds on. They said that is not for them to decide. No, it is for Minister Burch to decide, and she failed. She failed. What she did the other day was to say: “I’m not convinced by anything that the experts say. I don’t think the committee looked at this matter appropriately. I don’t think they had an evidence-based approach.”
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