Page 2870 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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They have made a change to a peer review panel. There used to be restrictions: if you were on a panel you could not apply for particular funding grants. They have made that change and there is certainly a call out—and I have put the call out to the arts community here—to really encourage our local practitioners to be involved in the panel because it will not only improve their own skills and development about how grants and how systems like this work but also infiltrate more deeply into the Australia Council’s recognition of ACT arts practice.
Recently we met with the Australia Council to discuss funding. The meeting also presented a platform to promote the quality and diversity of local arts activities being created in the ACT and for us to be recognised for our contribution. As this motion indicates, I will be taking this position to the cultural ministers in October because, when I raised it in a face-to-face meeting with the arts council, they did not refute it. They did not say that it is a nonsense argument. Indeed, they encouraged me to stand firm and to continue to raise this, to make sure that our ACT arts practitioners are supported, get proper feedback in grants applications, are supported to develop stronger grant applications should that be a problem, and are encouraged to go onto the peer review. They recognise that, if you took the national institutions out of the funding for ACT, perhaps there is a case to say that there is inequity in our funding here.
So, Mr Smyth, I think that says we will not be supporting your amendment, but I do not think you are particularly surprised by that. Mr Smyth, you stand here many a day and put a case with absolutely nothing behind it but an empty paper bag, so I think I will just leave that be.
Let us talk about some of the programs and activities that we support—our arts organisations. There is project funding, funding for key arts organisations, program organisation funding, out-of-rounds funding, start-up grants, ACT book of the year, ACT poetry prize, arts residency, residents in schools, and of course we have the Fringe Festival that will come back with such flurry and activity in the multicultural festival in February next year.
I thank the key arts organisations that we have. There was a comment about ArtSound. That is a peer assessment panel. The peer assessment panel determined the change in that, so that is not a decision of mine and not a decision of a bureaucrat; it is a peer assessment process.
In closing, it has just been announced—news just in—that a Canberra-based filmmaker has just won the Toronto International Film Festival’s Short Cuts International award—a global showcase of short films. This chap is Sotiris Dounoukos, who was raised in the ACT and was a 2011 creative arts fellow. Whilst this film is set in France, he is a Canberran and he will be promoting Canberra and ACT arts practice, I have no doubt, as he moves through his career in the years to come.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.55): Each of us here today can attest to the fact that the ACT community loves to come out for arts and culture.
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