15 February 1996

Meeting with Senator Alston

Shadow Minister for Communications and the Arts meets with representatives from ALIA at Parliament House, Canberra

This afternoon I met with Senator Alston, Shadow Minister for Communications and the Arts, at his Parliament House Office. Deputy executive director, Jennefer Nicholson, and systems and design manager, Ivan Trundle also attended the meeting, as did Senator Alston's senior adviser, David Kennedy.

We had requested the meeting at the beginning of the campaign and were delighted when the Senator's staff rang yesterday to organise a time for today. The downside was that we did not have sufficient notice to organise for our president (who is currently in New Zealand) to attend too.

At the outset Senator Alston raised the $11.4 million for public libraries which was part of last week's arts policy announcement by the Coalition in Melbourne. We had a useful discussion about potential ways to distribute the funds and the senator indicated that he would be keen to seek our advice when the details are to be worked out. We also asked that the funds be given priority for funding in the 1996/97 financial year.

Senator Alston was clearly very impressed with the size of our Association and the breadth of issues with which we dealt. We covered the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Recruitment and Career Development Strategy, industrial issues, education and training interests, ALIAnet, and the Libraries Working Group of the Cultural Ministers' Council. We talked about the role of the Federal Government in providing leadership and encouraging co-ordination between federal, state, territory and local governments on issues such as access to information networks and the digitisation of our Australian heritage.

While the Senator could of course give no undertakings of what outcomes we could expect in relation to the expenditure of the $11.4 million, we believe that this meeting has been important in establishing contact with the likely Minister for the Arts should a Coalition Government be elected and in raising the profile of our Association with a view to further discussions.