The ageing Civic pool could be replaced with a 8000-seat music venue rather than a stadium as part of a plan being considered by the ACT government.
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Chief Minister Andrew Barr said he would accelerate work on a Civic pavilion over the next two years, intent on delivering a venue that would attract larger touring acts to be loosely modelled on Sydney's Hordern Pavilion.
"So a larger scale indoor venue to host live music. You know, you could drop in a basketball court for the grand final of the WNBL. But to really fill the gap that's bigger than the AIS Arena, its primary purpose is cultural but it could host sport, a major sport event," Mr Barr said.
While the pool site - which has long been at the centre of debate about a Civic stadium - is not locked in for the music venue, Mr Barr said it would definitely be built somewhere in the central business district.
The Chief Minister said the government had chosen to pursue a new theatre and new music venue ahead of a new stadium because the city did not have equivalent spaces, while it did have sports infrastructure that was fit-for-purpose for the time being.
"As I have observed, if you're going purely on an economic return basis, then arts and cultural is a better spend. And there is no infrastructure like it in the ACT," Mr Barr said in a wide-ranging, end-of-year interview with The Canberra Times.
The government will also continue to update its decade-long infrastructure plan and a new stadium for Canberra remains on the government's medium-term agenda.
"I'm interested now in what the Commonwealth's intent is for the AIS precinct as a significantly rejuvenated premier sports precinct," Mr Barr said.
"And I think there's a partnering role that we can play there. So that's where we're headed on that question."
Mr Barr also said he was confident the ACT was in a strong position to tackle oncoming "economic challenges" and while the change of federal government in May had significantly altered what was possible for his government, the Labor-Greens coalition would be judged closely on what it was able to deliver before the 2024 election.
"It's a combination of delivering commitments that we took to the last election, so keeping faith with those policy commitments, and then we are now at the phase of the electoral cycle where you start generating ideas for the next term," he said.
"Sometimes these things are shaped by external events. ... The federal government has completely revolutionised what's possible in a number of areas that were stalled for the last 10 years. ... We have an opportunity to sit down with an engaged federal government on a bunch of policy issues that are important to Canberrans, but equally to the government. And, I guess, both of its constituent parties.
"That's, I think, how we manage both people's perceptions of the government's current performance, and then more importantly, the next election will be about what will happen in the second half of this decade in Canberra.
"So I've got that dual focus, delivering on this current parliamentary agenda, and then starting to turn my mind now to opportunities for the second part of the decade."
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Mr Barr said the territory's economy had continued to grow since the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, with payroll tax set to overtake general rates as the government's largest own-source revenue stream in 2023.
"We've smashed through our 2025 jobs target by the end of 2022. So incredibly strong employment growth, and that flows through so it's higher incomes, more people earning an income, fewer unemployed people," he said.
"And so that I think, is a really important core mission for the Labor Party, and the clue's in the title as I said before, that achieving full employment and maintaining that for as long as possible was a really core mission for us and goes to our objectives of reducing inequality, reducing poverty."
The government in August 2020, before the last election, set a target of delivering 250,000 jobs in the territory by 2025, but the latest jobs figures show there are 258,600 employed people in Canberra. Before the pandemic, there were 238,300 jobs in the ACT.
Mr Barr said the growth in the number of jobs, combined with coming changes to the industrial relations system, gave him hope the ACT would be able to respond well to rising costs of living.
"Obviously, there's a section of the community that will be feeling the interest rate increases, and I'm conscious of a number of households who will come off a very low fixed mortgage rate on to something higher next year," he said.
"And the Reserve Bank is intending that to crimp people's spending on discretionary items. So we're clear about that, the impact that that will have, and then focus then on, well, what are the sort of essential things that people have to spend money on and can we keep those price increases as low as possible?
"And sort of across water, sewerage electricity and gas, and there's things in place, obviously rates [at] 3.75 [per cent rises]. So well below inflation, I suspect for a second consecutive year."
But the Chief Minister said the Australian Bureau of Statistics was still getting it wrong on its population estimates for the ACT, which the most recent census data showed was higher than expected.
"We're still fighting that fight. Because it's important for our share of GST and other things," he said.
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