Page 3508 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 22 October 2014

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Amendment agreed to.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Arts—policy

MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (5.53): I move:

That this Assembly:

(1) notes the Minister for Arts, Joy Burch’s failures in developing the Territory’s arts sector which includes:

(a) giving $19 000 of taxpayer money in the 2015 Arts ACT Project Funding round to a theatre production called Kill Climate Deniers;

(b) consenting to a Fringe Festival act, which included a performer in a Nazi uniform and wearing a Hitler moustache, who stripped down to her underwear;

(d) failure to commit to Stage 2 of the Belconnen Arts Centre;

(e) failure to fully deliver on the ACT Arts Policy Framework; and

(f) failure to adequately consult with the ACT arts community;

(2) expresses strong concerns regarding this Minister’s judgement and professionalism; and

(3) calls on the Minister to table in the Assembly by the last sitting day in February 2015, the Government’s:

(a) proposed review of its Arts Policy Framework, including a detailed plan on stakeholder consultations, funding and implementation; and

(b) strategy for the delivery of its Arts Policy Framework to date, including a detailed plan on stakeholder consultations, funding and implementation.

It was delightful to have Ms Burch say this morning that she would like to see some intellectual engagement on the issue of the arts, then, because of her own personal technique, she just went straight to the slur. That is what you do when you cannot hold an intellectual argument or an intellectual engagement. That is what you do when you do not have a case. Of course, what the minister said was that I was a book burner. I thought, “Let’s consult with the philosophers about book burning in the modern context.” As everyone in this place would know, Alain de Botton is a well-known modern contemporary philosopher, perhaps one of the great philosophers. He has certainly written several books about it. I remembered what he had said in his book Art as Therapy about book burners:

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