IN the latest episode of the long-running Fitters’ Workshop soap-opera that has seen the visual arts and the music communities at loggerheads, Greens planning spokesperson, Caroline Le Couteur has accused the ACT Government of a “community-free approach” to planning.

Readers who follow the twists and turns in the dispute will know about the competing interests of Megalo Print Studio and Gallery and the concert-going community over a Stanhope Government decision to allocate the Fitters’ Workshop (next to the Canberra Glassworks) to Megalo as a permanent facility.

After an eleventh hour discovery that the workshop, a JS Murdoch building like the Powerhouse and Old Parliament House, had near-perfect acoustics, members of the music community lobbied successfully for an assembly inquiry into the uses of the Fitters’ Workshop and for suspension of work indefinitely on the plans for occupation by Megalo.

Ms Le Couteur was referring to the Government’s creation on November 14 of a regulation to exempt a precinct including the Kingston Arts Precinct from third party appeals, swiftly followed on November 28 by its approval of the development application for the Fitters’ Workshop.

Theoretically this could prevent anybody appealing against current plans and make the Assembly inquiry irrelevant.

Minister for the Arts Joy Burch responded that the Government would not do any work on the Fitters’ Workshop until the committee process had concluded.