Page 13 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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expectations. Again, go to your test, Mr Hanson; go to your comment. It is about it being a test about how someone stands and makes the improvements that are necessary.
Now let us go quickly to the fringe. Yes, I made a decision to appoint Jorian Gardner as the artistic director for the fringe. It was in my delegations and it was my executive right to do so. I made that decision. Contrary to you over there, we over here actually make executive decisions each and every day. Not every decision is public; not every decision is for a public tender. Just think of the mechanics of government. If you are talking about a public tender process, a competitive process for any value, what is the value? Is it $5,000 that I have also provided through arts to an organisation because they came to me and they had a program that was worthy of support?
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MS BURCH: I am just stating the obvious.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hanson!
MS BURCH: I am just stating the obvious, that decisions are made. Why did I make that decision? You yourself have accepted and recognised that Jorian Gardner started the Fringe Festival in 2004. Is he without controversy? No. Are fringe festivals without controversy? No. They would be a very dull fringe if they did not take you to the end of artistic controversy. Is it my right to censor art? Is that what is coming from you—that now a minister has to censor every performance that any dollar of mine goes towards? Is that what you are saying? I find that extraordinary. We hire an independent artistic director for the fringe. The conditions are in a deed of grant. The acquittal and the formal process about meeting those conditions are articulated in a deed of grant, and Jorian Gardner has met those requirements under the deed of grant.
Do you think that I would have reference to every performance, whether it is the National Multicultural Festival or the Fringe Festival? There are 3,000 performances. Do you want me to go through every performance, to know every act that is going to go on? Do you want me perhaps to get a translation of the Russian Cossacks singing to make sure that that did not offend a single person in this community?
I can tell you that 250,000 people came through. Some 18,000 people went to the fringe. That is a success. Some 18,000 people went to the fringe. Some 250,000 people went through the festival. There were 380 stalls and nearly 3,000 performers. If you think that, throughout all of that, everyone had no comment of a negative nature to make, you are living in goo-goo land, because there will always be views around participation in acts and other things.
I will not stand by and allow the artistic integrity and the freedoms that are attached to the fringe to be censored by me or, indeed, by this house here. If you are so offended by people getting dressed in Nazi uniform, what did you go do with Gary Humphries when he participated in The Producers, which had that skit Springtime for Hitler?
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