Page 1907 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 1992
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MR KAINE: I have a supplementary question. Would the Minister table his strategy for achieving the minimal 3.3 beds per thousand that the Macklin report recommends by the year 2000? I presume that he has a strategy.
MR BERRY: No, no; what I will do for you at any time is demonstrate to you how we do it better. I will repeatedly remind you of how we are doing it. Our performance last year demonstrates that we are able to treat more patients in our hospital system with less resources.
Mr Kaine: While the waiting lists get longer.
MR BERRY: I would not talk about waiting lists if I were you. Your performance was absolutely outrageous. While you threw $6m worth of unapproved dollars at the hospital system, the person on your right threw the money away. We fixed the financial problems within the hospital system and we have got it right. We treated more people in our hospital system and we will continue to do better than the Liberals.
Tuggeranong Community Festival
MS ELLIS: My question is directed to the Minister for the Arts. I ask this question as I have an involvement with and an interest in the Tuggeranong Community Festival. Has the Tuggeranong Community Festival committee been harshly dealt with by the Cultural Council in respect of a grant to the festival for this year?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, in broad terms I would say no, they have not been harshly dealt with. The background of this is that we recently announced grants totalling $650,000. Claims were made for $1.8m. So you can see that there was immediate difficulty. About a third of the applicants received funding. I do not know whether any of the successful applicants received all they asked for in any event. We have to assess, via the Cultural Council and its subcommittee on festivals, who gets funded and who does not, and that is no easy task.
I suppose the overriding requirement that I have sought is that the Cultural Council's committee be as careful as it can to assess that quality applications are approved, because we want successful outcomes. We cannot afford to allow public money not to be well used. With that in mind, I suppose the Cultural Council's committee considers a whole range of things, but I have categorised them in three ways. First of all, there is heavy competition. The committee - and it is not just in this area that we have committees like this working - has to assess applications against heavy competition. Secondly, I suppose, there is some background of previous years that they look at. Thirdly, they look at the proposal itself.
In the past there have been festivals in Tuggeranong of varying levels of success - some very good ones and some less successful. There does not seem thus far to have been a committee that establishes itself year after year and runs the program with the developing expertise that that brings. Last year there was no funding sought and none offered, and I believe that it was got up at the last minute with the valuable assistance of the Hyperdome. This year the proposal came through and it just did not meet the competition. It is as simple as that.
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