Page 2910 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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Nonetheless, I think it is a very vexed situation. One solution which does appeal, slightly, is saying, “It is heritage listed and let us just leave it closed for no-one.” But that would seem to be a foolish solution. Given that we are not going to go that way, I commend my amendments to the Assembly.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (6.17): What a tortured exercise in self-justification and what a meandering backflip and a half that was. I mean, really, Mr Speaker, Mrs Dunne has laid it out pretty clearly here. We have a solution. We have a way forward. In fact it was your colleague Ms Bresnan who wrote the recommendations. The fact is that both Ms Bresnan and I came to it with pretty open minds, as did Ms Porter for nine-tenths of the committee hearings. The fact is that Ms Bresnan and I, who are not known for our agreement on many issues, did agree on this. I think it is a well-written report, that the conclusions are sound and that there is a way forward. This sort of eleventh hour “let’s try and come up with something new” is just going to throw more confusion, more doubt and more divisiveness into the arts community.
We need a decision. The decision that we need is that which has been recommended by the committee—the majority of the committee and, I might add, until the eleventh hour, by all members of the committee. So I certainly commend Mrs Dunne for bringing this motion before the Assembly.
As I said, I came to this committee hearing with an open mind. It is not a subject I knew much about, nor did, I think, Ms Bresnan or Ms Porter. We looked at the submissions. We had extensive hearings. We heard the arguments from both sides, impassioned arguments often, and we heard from the experts. There were two acoustic experts that appeared before the committee and provided us with reports.
What is quite clear is that the original decision to basically gift the Fitters Workshop to Megalo was flawed. I will not litigate that but it was flawed. That was compounded by the fact that new evidence came to light, and the evidence is quite clear: the Fitters Workshop is a unique acoustic space, and Mrs Dunne has articulated that. We have all heard the arguments, we have all read the report, and many of us participated in the hearings. It is a unique acoustic space, and putting Megalo in the Fitters Workshop is going to essentially destroy that. It is a unique space and it has heritage value.
This is not to say that Megalo are not deserving. They do pretty well out of this deal. There is $3.9 million for Megalo. The solution that the committee came up with provides that money and provides Megalo with a purpose-built facility in the Kingston arts precinct. It is a pretty good solution. It is very difficult for the government to argue, or indeed for anyone else to argue, that Megalo is a loser out of this whole process, should we go forward with the committee’s recommendations.
So Megalo do well out of what the committee recommended and the arts community more broadly do well out of it. Megalo, as well as the choral societies, the choirs, the chamber orchestras and the rest of the performing arts community, could do well. They should not be excluded from what has been found to be a unique acoustic space.
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