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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (1 July) . . Page.. 2009 ..

MR QUINLAN: I am not sure that I got any answer at all about the conditions, Mr Speaker, but I will bat on with a supplementary question. Given that the Minister has decided to allow the residents not only to keep their homes but also to buy them, will the Minister extend the same goodwill to the people of the Causeway and the people of the long-stay caravan park in Narrabundah, or was it just a bit of good news in an otherwise tough week?

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, all issues must be dealt with on their merits. In regard to the people of the Causeway, my last understanding, and I could check, is that we still have not had an application to purchase those homes. There are conditions quite clearly set out - guidelines that ACT Housing has - that govern the selling of accommodation. It is dependent on our need and the state of the houses. In regard to the long-stay caravan park, I believe that Mr Quinlan's question has now been answered. There was some delay in that and for that I apologise. We talk to people. This is a government that actually does consult. I have met with the Uriarra residents and we have spoken to a residents group from the long-stay caravan park, and we will continue to do that.

We are a government that is out there doing things for the people of Canberra, and that is what members opposite do not like, Mr Speaker. They sit over there, in opposition, trying continually to thwart anything that the Government wishes to do. We will just get on with the job and they can sit there in isolation, in their conservatism, because they are irrelevant as they stand for nothing.

MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Chief Minister. I refer to the quarterly ministerial travel report tabled yesterday. Chief Minister, I noticed that four of the trips that you took over February and March of this year were charged to something called the promote ACT account. Can you tell us what that account is, what is the source of the funds in it, how much money is available in that account and who authorises expenditure against it?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am very pleased that somebody in the Assembly actually reads these reports that we put on the table. Of course, members of the Assembly do table their travel reports. It is something that was instituted by this Government in the interests of openness and putting everything that we were doing on the table for members of the Assembly. The promote government fund has existed for a long time, so it has been on that list for quite a long time. It is a fund put together with Qantas that is used for airfares when Ministers - particularly for me, I have to say, but other Ministers can use it too - are going interstate to promote the ACT as a good business destination. So, when I go - I have to say that I am predominantly the one - interstate to do boardroom lunches and those sorts of things to promote Canberra as a good investment destination, I use the promote ACT or promote Canberra fund. It is a fund put together with Qantas. It is actually part of the arrangements that we have with Qantas with regard to our travel contract.

MR KAINE: I am still not clear. Do I take it from that that it is public money?

Ms Carnell: No, it is Qantas's money.

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