Page 3033 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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Mr Wood: That is nonsense. I have been in touch with them.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is what they tell me. I said "meet with them".
MS FOLLETT: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Humphries for the question because it is an important matter and one which I am very happy to enlighten him upon. Chartwell Crafts applied for funding under the education and training grants program this year. That is a grants program that used to come under the old CDF arrangement and, in accordance with the arrangements made by Mr Kaine when the CDF was abolished, the amount of money available to that program was indexed. So, that gave us a total amount for that program this year of $508,000. There were 23 applications for funding and the total amount of funding applied for was $1.9m. It was very clear at the outset that there were going to be some disappointments around. Of course, as Mr Humphries points out, Chartwell Crafts was one of the organisations that did not receive funding and I understand that that is a great disappointment to them.
Nevertheless, Mr Speaker, I should point out to the house that during 1990-91, when Chartwell Crafts did receive some funding under this program, that funding had a special condition applied to it. I am advised that it was made very clear to Chartwell Crafts that their funding was a once-only grant and it was made in order to assist the organisation to establish a commercially viable operation. Given that the Alliance, when it did fund Chartwell Crafts, made it a very specific one-off grant, I think the organisation should have understood that at the time.
Mr Speaker, I would like to add that, under the Commonwealth Disability Services Act, the Commonwealth Government has responsibility for funding supported employment for people with intellectual disabilities. I understand that Chartwell has made an application to the Commonwealth for funding and that that application, under the Commonwealth grant system, is still under consideration. I guess we can wish Chartwell all the very best with that application. I believe also, Mr Speaker, that Chartwell have attracted some corporate sponsorship for their activities and I think that that is well and truly in keeping with the intention the Alliance had when they did fund them.
To conclude, Mr Speaker, I am very sorry indeed that it was not possible to fund Chartwell this year, but I believe that the circumstances that I have outlined do provide some basis for that decision. The fact is that there was simply not enough money to go around all of the applicants under that particular program. We can only wish them all the best in their applications under other programs.
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