Page 3948 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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that has continued. We know that the licence Mr Rattenbury spoke of never existed, and we know this will be another debacle brought about by the government. It will limit the way that EPIC could grow and it will take away the experience the private sector brought to the management of EPIC—which we know the minister appreciated because he praised their input. We think this will be a very, very poor outcome for the people of the ACT.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.06): I rise to make a well-anticipated speech. The Greens will be supporting this bill today, which will deliver the integration of Exhibition Park into the Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate under the Arts, Business, Events, Sport and Tourism Division through the repeal of the Exhibition Park Corporation Act. Members of this place who were here will recall that in 2009, as Mr Smyth has extensively outlined—and as I anticipated that he would—the Greens did not think that the government provided sufficient justification for the removal of the EPIC board and the integration into government. But five years on I do think the case has made much more clearly as to the benefits of bringing EPIC into government, due to a number of clear benefits for the community.
Firstly, it is clear now that the level of governance for such a small organisation as a territory-owned corporation is onerous and is not efficient. Secondly, EPIC delivers a significant level of in-kind community support. It is important to the Greens that the in-kind community support continues as EPIC is fundamentally a community facility ahead of a corporate facility. And, thirdly, I believe the government has better demonstrated how integrating EPIC with government will benefit Canberrans by providing a more efficient service across different venues.
EPIC is a community facility that should be run with the benefit of the community at its heart. I think that this is the most important point to consider here in thinking about what is the right governance model for this organisation. Certainly, knowing that none of the wonderful community events, such as the farmers market, the folk festival or the Canberra show—or any of the other many hundreds of events that take place each year—will be affected by this change has been an important consideration for me in thinking about what is the right governance model. It is clear that that level of in-kind community support will continue and that Exhibition Park will continue to be a really important venue in this city.
Back in 2009 we considered that there were several reasons to keep Exhibition Park as an independent territory-owned corporation with an independent board. As I have touched on, the issues that I looked at then were the value of EPIC as a community facility and the struggles of EPIC to progress in recent years, particularly in relation to accommodation and land acquisition. Certainly at the time the board were not at all keen to be integrated. There were certainly positives in terms of energy, expertise and commitments, but the negatives seemed to be built around the constraints that EPIC had faced at that time.
At the time the Greens formed the view that there was value in retaining a board with a range of community input and experience. Our concern was to retain a level of community input into the future of EPIC. In that regard we were very pleased to see the government establish a community advisory committee to try and access some of
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