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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3122 ..

MS McRAE: Thank you, Mr Humphries. That is exactly the information I was seeking. By way of supplementary question, then, if you want to include the betterment aspect of it as well, yes; but I was specifically asking about the allocation of the $500,000 for helpShop. What I was specifically after was the selection criteria, the list of things, which you did indicate. Is there a form that was used? What was the basis for those factors all being rolled in?

MRS CARNELL: I will take that question, Ms McRae, because I can answer that right now, to avoid having to answer it tomorrow.

Ms McRae: Can Mr Kaine have a go next?

MRS CARNELL: I thought you would be interested in the answer. Those opposite might not know about the way the helpShop program was put together because, although all members of the Assembly were asked to go out to have a look at the helpShop operation, I do not think anybody opposite actually took that opportunity. A caravan went around to every shopping centre in Canberra, set up for a period of time and spoke to all of the shopkeepers, all of the people involved in that shopping centre. They also were available to speak to members of the public who used the particular shopping centre. Lists were compiled of the sorts of things the people at a particular local shopping centre wanted or thought would be appropriate for their particular centre. Follow-up meetings occurred, with the helpShop people going back to those centres with the wish lists, basically. We then went through the approach of trying to work out exactly how you determine what things on that wish list would be funded.

At that stage, rather than try to dictate to local centres what they would or would not spend the money on, it was determined that we would give the money, based upon appropriate criteria and appropriate accountability, to the shopping centres themselves to spend on the sorts of things they believed were appropriate on their list. It is certainly true that we are not going to be able to fund everything in the first year, but this is the first year of a fairly innovative program. So the money will go to the shopping centres. I think mid-November is when the current process will be ready for the payments to be made to the local centres, and I am confident that the local centres will do very well with that money. How much each centre got was based upon the size of the centre, the age of the centre and whether the centre was on the list for precinct management. The centres that were going to get significant dollars were not put onto the list of smaller shopping centres. Basically, those were the criteria. This is an ongoing project, Mr Speaker. It is the sort of thing that I think over future years will be able to plug money into the smaller centres and give them an opportunity to upgrade their centres.

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