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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2081 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

I think the foolishness of those early actions was revealed. Then we went through this charade of setting up a review, presumably talking to people, allegedly talking to people, and then in the end coming to a decision and saying, "Yes, we are still going to have a multicultural festival, but we will go around the circle and have a Canberra Festival that stands alone." It was all unnecessary, and it came down simply to someone getting upset when they did not need to.

Clearly enough, Mr Mico's complaint that the Multicultural Festival was not being well served in CTEC and should have been outside of CTEC was absolutely justified, because that is the step that the government took. It might have been better, and I think much less disruptive, if at the time Mr Mico said that someone simply said, "Okay, we will think about this. You make a valid point. We have placed a great deal of confidence in you over the years, Mr Mico, and we will think about it," instead of going through all this turmoil of the last one or two months.

So now we have a budget, I think of $200,000 gleaned from somewhere, for Festivals ACT. I saw an advertisement in the weekend's paper for a consultant to advise on the festival's policy for the ACT, notwithstanding that we have had a number of festivals that worked quite well, and notwithstanding that there are plenty of people who have been talking about this over a long period.

I simply wanted to make a point at this time about all that unnecessary action. I considered at one stage of raising a matter of public importance so that the debate was aired to a greater extent in this place, but we simply asked some questions. I think there was a lot of evasion and a lot of equivocation, but in the end, although it was not said in so many words, someone acknowledged the mistakes that had been made by trying as best they could to restore the situation to what it was.

Also contained in the Chief Minister's estimates are matters affecting the arts in the ACT. The arts do not always get a great deal of publicity, and yet I would think that the arts are more important to many Canberrans-I am sorry to say this to you, minister-than sport. Indeed, as we look at the money that has been spent on sport, I think the arts suffer quite a deal.

Mr Stefaniak: The arts are not unimportant. I think they are both very important to Canberra.

MR WOOD: Yes. I do not like the double negative there. I think these things should be expressed more positively. When you look at the enormous expense of Bruce Stadium and think what might have been done instead with all that money, we could have a very vibrant arts sector in Canberra.

Very often there is a bipartisan policy here on the arts. When Gary Humphries was minister we did not argue too much. We argued over minor points. I have never disputed the grants that are given, only at the time when the former Chief Minister severely cut the Institute of the Arts.

It is difficult to decide who gets the grants from that $3 million or so of the ACT budget that goes to community arts groups. It is difficult to draw the line and say that something above the line is going to be a more successful product than something under the line.

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