THE latest Childers Group Forum, held to a packed house in the very tiny Canberra Museum and Gallery Theatre on Wednesday evening, is another milestone in the development of this lobby group, but it still has a way to go. 

They did, on the whole, and that was a problem – oh, for the lively stoushes that characterised ministerial forums in the old days of Gary Humphries and Bill Wood, those with long memories were thinking.

The forum was an opportunity for all three arts spokespeople from the ACT assembly, Arts Minister Joy Burch and Liberal and Greens MLAs Vicki Dunne and Caroline Le Couteur, to put forward their parties’ respective arts policies.

During an excessively lengthy 35 minute introduction to the main business of the evening, we heard several poems each from two slam poets, Miranda Lello and Andrew Galan and from the irrepressible Childers Group spokesperson David Williams, who outlined the lofty intentions of the lobby group, describing it rather optimistically as “the heart and soul of Canberra.”

Williams outlined the group’s work so far, including a forum earlier in the year at The Street Theatre, an opinion piece in The Canberra Times and a meeting with the managing editor of the same publication.

There followed 15 minute speeches from each of the candidates, who summarised the arts policies released earlier in the day.

Ms Burch criticised the ACT Liberals for having threatened “to ban all public art,” and talked up her party’s intention to create arts hubs inCanberra. As well, she announced their intention to inaugurate schools poetry slams in the ACT and to make the Multicultural Fringe, “not a one-off, but a permanent fixture.” Ms Burch said that if anybody could produce a festival longer than one night with the $20,000 earmarked, she would be happy to hear from them.

Ms Dunne denied that the Liberals were opposed to public art and claimed that it was under the Liberals that theCanberraMuseumand Gallery, the Tuggeranong Arts Centre on the Canberra Playhouse were produced. Many present recalled that it was former Labor arts minister Bill Wood who secured funding to those buildings out of the Canberra Casino premium and that the openings were bipartisan, a far cry, it seemed, from today.

Ms Dunne said that if she were fortunate enough to become Arts Minister after the coming elections, $2.4 million would be allocated to the Cultural Facilities Corporation to administer the Kingston Arts Precinct, which includes the disputed Fitters’ Workshop.

Ms Le Couteur said there was “fairly universal support for the arts and the major political parties,” and general agreement – except in the case of the Fitters’ Workshop – that arts added to the “quality of living.” She criticised suggestions, however that the allocation of funds in the ACT Budget punched above its weight nationally, pointing out to the a proximate 3 per cent of budget in the ACT, the NSW government spent 8.4 per cent all arts and the Victorian Government 10.5 per cent.

She outlined the Greens’ interest in creating a centralised communications and marketing bureau for the arts and – a quirky one from a bike-lover – funding for arty bike racks.

The rest of the evening was given in over to a Q&A between representatives from key arts organisations like Belconnen Arts Centre, Ausdance ACT and ScreenACT.

At this point the confidence of the candidates tended to wilt.

The Childers Group had no doubt sought to create a tight structure by asking key arts organisations to put forward formal questions. But in doing so, all the candidates felt obliged to reply, even when the question was not specifically for them. Thus we heard Vicky Dunne quite unnecessarily admitting that dance wasn’t her thing.

The discussion really became bogged down in at the point when two youthful participants, Rosanna Stevens from the writing group “Scissors Paper Pen” and Michael Sollis from the youth music sector and the Griffyn Ensemble asked about the government’s intentions in promoting arts in school curricula—it all seemed too hard and besides which, they said, they weren’t education spokespeople.

The Childers Group would like to be “the heart and soul of Canberra,” but before it becomes that, it needs to find a way to encourage freer speech and more outspoken ideas than can emerge in encounters of this kind. It is debatable as to whether the degree of formality imposed the other night is the way for the arts community to talk. I was one of several people who had to leave shortly before the end of a long, slow evening, but I’d be surprised to hear that any  such talk emerged.