Page 2908 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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(2) Omit paragraph (2), substitute:
“(2) calls on the Government to:
(a) release all documents connected with existing Arts Precinct planning and consultation processes; and
(b) commence a master planning process for the Kingston Arts Precinct that considers all options for the Fitters’ Workshop.”.
Basically what I am doing with my amendments is noting a couple more things. There was no planning advice presented to the committee inquiry. But, possibly more importantly, from the timing, the DA for the Fitters Workshop is still before ACAT, and it would seem, from the advice I have, that it is unlikely to be resolved during the time of the Seventh Assembly. What that means in practice, unfortunately, is that because no physical work will be started on the Fitters Workshop because of the ACAT hearing, this is going to be an issue that is not resolved until then. Nothing physical will happen, so it will always be open for everybody to seriously suggest that the decision should be changed because no action can be taken by the government at this stage.
So to quite an extent I think this debate is just all noise. It is theatre. Whatever we decide today, there will still be the opportunity for further action in the future because the DA is still in play. It is a big pity that it has taken so long. Unfortunately, taking so long to make a decision about third-party appeals in the area has only added to the length of time for this. I have already had my say on that. I will not bother repeating that, because I am going to run out of time.
I am calling on the government, firstly, to release all the documents connected with the existing arts precinct planning and consultation processes. I am aware that there have been a number of planning processes, and all the documents relating to those have not been released. Secondly, probably more importantly, I am calling on the government to commence a master planning process for the Kingston arts precinct that considers all options for the Fitters Workshop. The recommendations of the Assembly inquiry did not do it in quite that way. For clear reasons, they had decided what they thought would happen with the Fitters Workshop. But given where we are now, this is what I think is possibly the best way forward from this point.
One of the reasons I want to do this is to think of a way that we can have a fresh look forward in a less confronting way. Clearly, we have the situation where we have—as Ms Burch, the arts minister, called it—two camps from an arts point of view. This is not a situation which is possible to be well resolved. Maybe if we do a master planning process, which I assume would be done by the LDA, as they are the authority for the area, we could do it from a different point of view. And, hopefully, we might get a more measured, more considered and less emotive answer if we did this.
It is very clear from what we have seen of the planning that has been done to date—what we have seen largely has been the Conroy report—that to make this arts precinct
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