Page 4547 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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Mr De Domenico: Basket weaving and knitting.
MR WOOD: Mr De Domenico, again; he never shuts up, does he? Mr Humphries has never seen the multitude of mechanics institutes and the like that are dotted over this nation; he has never been aware of the school of arts that has a wide community and working persons base; he has never been aware of the very artistic tradition in the trade union movement, exemplified, to give only one example, by the great tradition of the trade union banners; he has never been aware of any of that activity. There is a very large amount of literature available in this country. Mr Humphries should attend to some of it and acquaint himself with that long and honourable tradition. Of course, he is an elitist. The arts, for Mr Humphries, is something that only the non-working class can participate in, share in and work in. He comes up with the strangest view, which reveals only his ignorance.
MR HUMPHRIES: I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. I ask the Minister: What criteria were used by the Cultural Council to determine the merits of this grant to the TLC? If it is true, as reported in the Canberra Times, that members of the council are "still seething about having to approve a grant to the Trades and Labour Council", can he assure the Assembly that the original recommendations made by the Cultural Council to the Minister were accepted in full?
MR WOOD: Mr Humphries makes a whole range of quite wild assumptions. Was the application to the Minister? The application never came to me. I expect that the application went through the routine channels, being submitted to the arts and special events section for assessment. I expect that the application, along with a whole range of applications, because they were all dealt with in this mode, was assessed by a panel of peers. We have had some debate over time, certainly publicly if not here, about that process of evaluation - the arm's-length funding.
Mr Humphries made an offensive remark, in the first part of his question, about a quid pro quo. Mr Humphries, I was unaware of this application until discussions at a fairly advanced stage with the Cultural Council, who brought it up at that stage.
Mr Humphries: Did you accept the submission made by the council?
MR WOOD: Wait a minute. I will finish if Mr Humphries wants me to finish. The council brought it to me at that stage. We have established a pattern whereby I look through their likely recommendations and agree or disagree, and I debate the issue with them. You might have heard Mr Refshauge, the chair of the Cultural Council, say on radio a little while ago that I agreed with all the recommendations that they brought forward; there was no change to any of them. That was the first occasion that I became aware of that claim. I am actually delighted by that; it is terrific. I am very pleased to see the Trades and Labour Council getting involved. Perhaps Mr Humphries has never heard the TLC choir; it might do his soul good if he did. In the end, as Mr Refshauge said, I approved the recommendations as they came to me, because I thought that the advice from the Cultural Council was outstanding and they had very carefully worked through all the processes, and that it was appropriate that I give my confirmation to what they had done.
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