Page 1664 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Education - Specific Purpose Payments
MR CORNWELL: My question is to Mr Wood as Minister for Education. Can he explain why, in the 1994-95 Federal budget, the ACT's specific purpose payment for current purposes has fallen in the government school sector from $16.7m to $15.5m between 1993-94 and 1994-95 and what effect this reduction of $1.2m will have on government schooling in the ACT?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, I do not expect that it will have any particular impact at all.
Mr Cornwell: We did not need it - $1.2m?
MR WOOD: Just wait a minute. The Commonwealth Government, along with the States, has for quite a number of years now been discussing the purpose of those specific purpose payments as against general grants and the balance of those and how they should be distributed. Your colleagues in the conservative States are very much against some of these sorts of grants and very much against tying funds. There is quite a deal of debate, and there has been some change in the way the Commonwealth has distributed its funds. I have not seen the detail of that, but I would expect that if the specific purpose payments go down the general grants will go up a little to compensate.
I have examined the budget, and I am not aware that in the education sector we need to make a compensation for that amount. Certainly we need to understand that the transition funding for education - something like $24m at the moment - is coming down over the next few years as part of the general decline in Commonwealth revenue. We have to take that into account. I am not aware, although I will check it for you, that there is any impact on the question you raised.
Arts Council Funding
MRS GRASSBY: My question is to the Minister for the Arts, Mr Wood. Has the Arts Council of the ACT lost its funding support from the ACT Government? If so, why has this happened?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, the Arts Council of the ACT has had a quite long history and, I think, a distinguished one. Nevertheless, as times change, functions of particular groups change. The Arts Council in recent times has adapted to that; but, unfortunately, I am not sure how well that adaptation has gone in the last year or so. To give you some detail, it has been in receipt of annual funding for quite some time. It received just under $100,000 in 1993, and the Cultural Council had proposed to me a grant of $104,000 for 1994, subject to approval of a revised program and budget.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .