Page 5139 - Week 12 - Thursday, 27 October 2011
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Prevarication will lead to stagnation and acrimony. A decision has been made and it is the right decision.
Megalo feels, rightly, that its interests are not being considered and that it is being used as a political punching bag.
I sincerely hope that the ACT Greens will take the big picture view on this debate and not support Ms Dunne's motion.
That was a letter from Megalo. There we have in a few short words Mrs Dunne’s political biography—disarray, instability, prevarication, stagnation, acrimony and using good people as a political punching bag. Unfortunately, the big picture view that Megalo seeks is foreign to Mrs Dunne.
The decision to move Megalo to the Fitters Workshop was made by my predecessor, Jon Stanhope, who was the arts minister at the time, and it was the former Chief Minister who secured the $3.8 million in the budget to make this move possible for Megalo, a budget that was approved and agreed in whole by the ACT Greens.
I will put on the record that in my time as arts minister I have been very open about this whole process and have made the artsACT staff available to both Ms Le Couteur and Mrs Dunne for briefings. I also note that Mrs Dunne has been provided with hundreds, if not possibly thousands, of pages of documents about the Fitters Workshop decisions by multiple directorates which provide the process and context around the decisions.
With this in mind, I am quite surprised that the Greens and Liberals feel an Assembly inquiry is necessary, even if it means a grinding halt to Megalo’s dreams and also the important work around the establishment of the visual arts hub at Kingston. What we have here today is a proposal for a flawed process for all the wrong reasons. We know from conversations with Ms Le Couteur’s office yesterday that she does not really want an inquiry, but here we have an amendment that keeps one.
Let me outline the other side of the coin. Let me outline the effect today’s motion will have on the local arts community that would benefit from the establishment of a visual arts hub in Kingston, not least of them the Canberra Glassworks, that was looking forward to the synergies and the collaborative opportunities that Megalo being next door would bring.
The ACT government’s decision to move the Megalo Print Studio + Gallery into the Fitters Workshop was made after talking with the community, and we continue to enhance community engagement and support for the arts. In 2002-03 we produced the arts facility strategy, which is a long-term strategy for arts in the territory. We identified the Kingston Foreshore as a centre for leading visual arts production and activity. The establishment of the Canberra Glassworks at the Kingston Foreshore in 2007 was the first step in realising this strategy and this, I must say, has been a great success. The Canberra Glassworks has been embraced by Canberra. It is wonderful to see so many people coming in to see the program and participate in the off-the-street program.
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