Page 2339 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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along the corridor to Gungahlin. Where are the people coming from? Where are the jobs that they will be employed in so that they can pay for the high cost of living that this government imposes on this city?
This city is our future. We must be city builders. You cannot keep stretching the city from one side to the other. We have currently got the doughnut ring that is Civic, with the hollow still being empty. And the problem with doughnuts is that if you stretch them, they break. It is well and good to have plans like city to the lake with extraordinary costs to drop Parkes Way, but where is the money coming from? And when will it begin? That is the problem. There are many areas now in this line in the revised budget statement. It has gone from, I think, $80 million to about $500 million.
The other area, of course, that is covered by this line and that is in my portfolio responsibility is the arts. It is interesting that all members of the committee were quite hopeful that the government might come back and amend this budget, including, for instance, the Belconnen Arts Centre. The Belconnen Arts Centre is ready to go, but the government are holding off that money for city to the lake, which is not ready to go. They are doing some more planning. There is capital metro, which is not ready to go, and the new subacute hospital, which is not ready to go. But for a couple of million dollars, the people of Belconnen could have what we have in Tuggeranong—their own arts centre. And for a couple of million dollars beyond that, through the TAMS portfolio, the work could be done to do the foreshore of the lake there at Belconnen.
It is a good example of how this government gets it so wrong. Here is something that I think every member in the place agrees should occur. Here is something the community is desperate for. Belconnen does not have the town hall facility that this would provide. The plans are ready to go. Everybody seems to want it, and yet it does not get funding. And instead of talking about real things that could occur today—I understand the DA could be tabled at any time or placed with ACTPLA at any time—we have got the Treasurer continuing to return to the stadium and we have got Mr Corbell continuing to return to capital metro. But the people of Belconnen just want an arts centre. It is not a lot in the scheme of things in the capital provision account for that to be funded. It would be great to see the Treasurer come back and move an amendment to include that in this budget, because everyone wants it. It is ready to go, and it builds the community. It builds the community of Belconnen. And it would be a great thing to do.
There are a number of other recommendations in the document about the arts and the value of the arts. On one hand we heard from many groups about mental health issues in children as young as primary school-aged students. And one of the ways to ameliorate the impact of mental health is through the arts. Alain de Botton has written a book called Art as Therapy. Art is a great healer. We asked for an arts officer to be embedded in the education department to assist with the promotion of the arts in education, and the answer was, “No, we have adequate skills already.” And yet you hear from Belconnen community arts, you hear from people like the Childers Group, that this would be of invaluable benefit to the community and bidding our city.
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