SOUTH AUSTRALIAN COUNTRY ARTS TRUST (CONSTITUTION OF TRUST) AMENDMENT BILL

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 25 November 2008. Page 800.)

Second Reading

The Hon. R.D. LAWSON (16:11): I rise to indicate that Liberal members will be supporting the second reading of this bill and its passage. It is convenient that today the minister tabled in this place the annual report for 2008 of Country Arts SA. It is a report which I commend to members. The report is somewhat late. It is required to be delivered to the minister by September and tabled by the minister, and one would have expected it last year, but it is here. I note an appendix to the report indicates that the Minister for Health has been advised that the Country Arts report was delayed pending the completion of audited financial statements.

I think the report is a commendable summary of the activities undertaken by Country Arts SA, and they are very extensive activities indeed. As members would be aware, the range of programs, activities and services supported by Country Arts SA is very wide. It extends beyond managing and operating performing arts centres located in Whyalla, Port Pirie, Renmark and Mount Gambier. It supports financially developing a performing arts touring program for performing arts to regional centres and regional communities.

It develops and manages a visual arts touring program with a focus on creative education, and it develops and manages a program of activities focused on regional centres of culture, amongst many other things. These are important for the health and well-being of our country communities, who too often are left behind metropolitan Adelaide when it comes to the receipt of services and general cultural benefits that arise from being in a major metropolitan area, where the tyranny of distance is not great and a wide variety of programs and artistic practitioners is available. Most people in metropolitan Adelaide have the benefit of being able to access arts programs as they desire, and Country Arts SA does the best it can to ensure that country residents and country arts practitioners are not disadvantaged.

This bill changes the board and governance structure of Country Arts SA. It will abolish four regional country arts boards. When we on this side of the council see the abolition of regional boards, our immediate suspicions arise that this is yet another attempt by centralised government to reduce country representation. That is not, I am pleased to say, the case here, where the Country Arts Trust itself came up with the proposal to alter the board arrangements by abolishing the four country regional boards and reconstituting the trust's membership to comprise the presiding trustee, five regionally-based trustees, a Local Government Association nominee and two other trustees with management and entrepreneurial legal or arts expertise.

The five regionally-based trustees will represent the five regions, incorporating the revised South Australian government regional boundaries. Those regional boundaries were promulgated by the government in December 2006, and there is a rather draconian edict from the government that government service providers actually adopt these regional boundaries. The point here is that it was the Country Arts Trust itself that agreed to the restructuring.

Under this new proposal one trustee will be appointed to represent each of the following groupings of these regional areas as laid down by government: the Barossa, Yorke and lower north region; Eyre and western/northern region; Fleurieu and Kangaroo Island/hills region; Murraylands region; and, the Limestone Coast region. Under the proposed amendments a person will not be eligible to be appointed to represent a proclaimed region unless that person resides in the region, and we think that is an important protection. It is all very well to say that one represents a region, but in a case like this it is entirely appropriate that the representative indeed be a resident of the region.

I commend to members the report of Country Arts SA tabled today, which illustrates quite vividly the extent of the work and programs undertaken by the organisation. It is not a large organisation by most government standards: it has some 60 employees and is governed by a board. Steve Grieve, an Adelaide architect with extensive arts connections, has been the chair for some time, and I commend him for his work. Ken Lloyd, the chief executive officer, is particularly diligent and active in discharging his responsibilities. I commend the report to members; it makes good reading.

It is unnecessary for me to outline further why the Liberal opposition supports not only the organisation but also the amendments. I emphasise that, whilst we normally would not support the abolition of country regional boards in most circumstances, in this particular case cogent reasons have been provided and adequate country representation is maintained in the new structure. We support the bill and look forward to its rapid passage.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.