Page 8 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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Those who made the decision that allowed that to happen should be made accountable and we should know who they are.
She further said:
It has nothing to do with multiculturalism and, in fact, it was insulting and it insulted quite a few people, and I think it insulted people’s sensibilities, people’s sense of dignity, I think, at a level also.
Madam Speaker, it is extraordinary that the minister is so oblivious to the offence that she has caused and seems to try and brush it aside as humour. It is clear that this act of stupidity did cause offence. My conversations with a number of very prominent identities in the multicultural community make it very clear that they have lost confidence in the minister responsible.
This was entirely predictable. The minister ignored due process and appointed Jorian Gardner as the director of the fringe. Mr Peter Williams, who ran the event last year, had raised concerns in the media about lack of process through which he was not even approached by the government to tender for the festival. He realised he had lost his job when he heard Mr Gardner was being given $20,000 by the minister to run the festival without any competitive process.
Let me quote from an editorial in the Canberra Times of 3 July last year titled “Due process left at the Fringe” which makes it clear how entirely predictable it was that Ms Burch’s appointment of Mr Gardner would lead to controversy. The editorial states:
It will be fascinating to see if controversy-prone Jorian Gardner gives Arts Minister Joy Burch any cause to regret the decision to hand him control of next year’s Fringe Festival. The ACT government has committed $20,000 annually over four years to support the fringe event alongside the Multicultural Festival, as well as in-kind support, infrastructure and public liability insurance.
Ms Burch’s decision to abandon the competitive elements of selection process and appoint Mr Gardner—who founded the original festival in 2004—has been questioned by the organisers of the 2013 festival. In response, Ms Burch’s spokesperson said the festival director’s job did not have to be open to all comers because funding has been switched from ArtsACT to a separate item in the ACT budget. Be that as it may, the money still comes out of the pockets of territory taxpayers. As such, Ms Burch has a duty—
I repeat: “Ms Burch has a duty”—
to ensure that it is disbursed according to merit and in a transparent fashion. However far Mr Gardner’s qualities … stood out, observing due process might have been a wiser option.
That quotation is from an editorial of the Canberra Times in July last year. The minister was warned. By her actions, by her poor judgement, the minister is entirely responsible for the insults caused to the multicultural community. She alone appointed
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