Page 2387 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 16 September 1992
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Mr Gerald Gold : Deputy Chief Minister : "The Land" Art Exhibition
MR HUMPHRIES (4.31): Madam Speaker, first of all, I commend Mr Stevenson for that statement. I have had many representations from Mr Gold. I think it took some courage for Mr Stevenson to come into the house and say that he was wrong in things he had said about Mr Gold based on information supplied to him. That is good news for Mr Gold and a tribute to Mr Stevenson.
Madam Speaker, I cannot be quite as charitable about the Deputy Chief Minister, about whom I want to raise a couple of matters. I have been approached by constituents who unfortunately are most dissatisfied with the delay which they have encountered in having representations to the Minister dealt with. On 23 October last year Ms Robyn Manley wrote to the Health Promotion Fund seeking appointment as an arts representative on the fund's advisory committee. Ms Manley received no reply until 4 March this year and was rather upset about the fact that it took so long for the ACT Government to respond to her concern. She waited from 23 October 1991 to 4 March 1992, a period of well over four months, for a reply.
She wrote to me about the matter. I took it up with the Deputy Chief Minister, who wrote back to me after a month or so, indicating that these things had happened, giving me the dates, and then saying:
I can assure you the correspondence is being answered appropriately and effectively by officers of the Department of Health.
I do not think that four months' delay is appropriate or effective. That is too long to have to wait for a reply to what was for this person a quite important matter that she wanted dealt with expeditiously. Similarly, I wrote to the Deputy Chief Minister in May of this year to ask about the supply of CPAP machines under the ACT equipment scheme to sufferers of sleep apnoea. I received a reply to my letter only this week, again after about four months. The person on whose behalf I wrote has been suffering from that disorder during that time and would obviously have liked a reply long before now.
While I am on my feet I want to offer not just criticism but some praise for an important venture going on at the moment in Kingston. Last week I attended the preview of an art exhibition for the National Heart Foundation at Studio One Printmaking Workshop. It was an exhibition of 12 prints called "The Land". Those 12 prints constitute a folio of hand printed etchings, lithographs, and screen and relief prints which are the culmination of 12 months of work between the ACT Division of the National Heart Foundation and Studio One.
One print was donated by each of 12 Australian women artists - some of them quite well known, some of them not so well known; all of them very talented, as members who visit that exhibition, which opens on 25 September, will realise. They include Mandy Martin, a very well-known Australian artist; Ruth Waller; Roslyn Kean; Pam Debenham and Jacqui Driver. Some of them are local; others
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