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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3121 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Already, $300,000 from the Natural Heritage Trust has been allocated for a new regional nature and cultural education centre at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. This will serve to enhance Tidbinbilla's role as a centre for the education of school children, tertiary students and community groups and will build on the current strengths of the reserve by providing huge new opportunities for environmental and cultural education. In other words, it will add value to the asset the ACT has at Tidbinbilla.

There are also other things that are presently being processed for approval by way of grants to the ACT from this enormous trust. The sorts of projects that have been submitted to the Commonwealth include improving the management of regional waterways, including the Queanbeyan and Molonglo rivers, Jerrabomberra Creek and Lake Burley Griffin; re-establishing habitat of native fish along the Murrumbidgee River; reducing the use of natural hardwoods for firewood, most of which comes from properties in surrounding New South Wales, by encouraging the planting and use by consumers of plantation firewood; and a series of other very important measures. If only a small proportion of those measures are funded in the ACT, it will have an enormous impact on the environment for the benefit of the citizens of both this Territory and surrounding New South Wales.

MS McRAE: My question is to the Minister for Planning, Mr Humphries. Minister, could you explain how the money that is going to be allocated for the helpShop program - I believe about $500,000 - is going to be distributed? What criteria were used to decide which shopping centres would get money and which would not, and what criteria were used to determine the differing amounts of money they are going to get, varying, I understand, from about $6,000 to $60,000? What were the criteria used to determine which shopping centres got money and, then, how much money each of them got?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I need to take at least some of Ms McRae's question on notice. I think that, when she talks about helpShop, she is also rolling in other measures that are related to helpShop, including the decision to provide betterment or change of use charges - - -

Ms McRae: No.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is the way in which differentiation is occurring between different centres in respect of that. There is money available in the helpShop program for centres of a direct kind. If she is referring only to that money, I can get information for her and table it as soon as I can. Essentially, the centres were determined by a fairly complex range of criteria, including the strength of their surrounding markets, the level of their age and the extent to which infrastructure at those centres had run down; and issues brought forward by the community, or a representation, were also taken into account in that process. However, I will give Ms McRae full information in the detailed answer.

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