Page 2912 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this amendment because somebody from the Greens has to stand up and make a decision today. You have to make the decision for the Greens, Mr Speaker: do you support the committee report? Do you support a multipurpose facility at the Fitters Workshop? Or do you support the government in destroying—because, let us face it, this is not going to change for decades to come—the unique characteristics of the Fitters Workshop?
That is the threshold decision today. The decision that you are going to make in the next half an hour is going to reverberate for decades because once this decision has been made, once that facility has been refurbished to fit Megalo, that is it. It is a done deal. No-one is going to rip that out in the short term. Perhaps in decades to come, maybe at the bicentenary of the ACT, this will be coming up again and a decision will be made, but for the next several decades, for generations to come, the consequence of your decision tonight will reverberate. So consider that.
Putting some naff amendment through that is trying to walk a fence—I do not know what it does, to be honest—is not going to help the process. But what it will do is to give Ms Burch the opportunity to essentially do what she wants to do, and that is to destroy the Fitters Workshop as a cultural and heritage facility and as a unique musical space.
We will not be supporting the amendment. I commend Mrs Dunne for not only this motion tonight but her passion and her support for the arts community broadly—the performing arts community, the visual arts community. What she is trying to do, and what she wants to do, out of a very difficult circumstance, is unite the community and give them a way forward. We have a way forward. I commend Mrs Dunne and her motion.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation) (6.27): I will speak briefly in relation to the amendment and Mrs Dunne’s motion. I think Mr Hanson in his usual manner has verballed Ms Le Couteur. I understand what Ms Le Couteur is trying to do. I do not think, though, that it does achieve that end. Ultimately it will not achieve an outcome where everyone will get what they want. It would appear, as an observer of this process for some time, that it will not be possible to achieve an outcome so that everyone will get what they want. So the one area that I do agree with Mr Hanson on is that a decision one way or the other needs to be made.
The concern I have with Mrs Dunne’s motion is that it quite possibly falls foul of the self-government act, particularly section 65(1), that an enactment vote or resolution for the appropriation of public money of the territory must not be proposed by the Assembly except by a minister.
In seeking to force the government to adopt the committee’s recommendation 5, there clearly is the expectation from Mrs Dunne that the Assembly is somehow directing a minister to act on this particular matter. It is clear from the self-government act—and this is a very important protection within the self-government act—that only a minister can propose an enactment vote or resolution for the appropriation of public money.
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