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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Wednesday, 31 March 2004) . . Page.. 1428 ..

To date the knowledge fund has provided assistance to 119 companies and organisations with a total of $7.3 plus million in grants. The grants cover companies working on a wide range of industries including education, sports science, automotive parts, photonics, security, pharmaceuticals and defence. That is by no means a completely exhaustive list.

I read in a throw away line from a press release of the Leader of the Opposition that this was the “failed” knowledge bank. I ask members to compare this approach with that taken by the previous government, which seemed to pick out one or two large industries, throw a lot of money at them and lose it. I will give one example. We have an expert panel involved in examining applications—there are many applications for this—and one of the members of that panel is a very well known and accomplished business person and physicist. In recent weeks he confided that at the beginning he was somewhat sceptical about the knowledge bank and what it was attempting to do. At least he is a complete convert.

Virtually on all judgements the knowledge bank is, and will continue to be, a complete success and a whole lot better—a more strategic approach—than we have seen in past years.

MS MacDONALD: I have a supplementary question. Can the minister tell the Assembly whether the interactive entertainment and education sector received any support from the ACT government? Is he aware of any other proposals or policies in this area?

MR QUINLAN: As fate would have it, yes the government has provided a considerable amount of assistance to the interactive entertainment and education sector—something approaching half a million dollars.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The supplementary question has to relate to the original question. The original question is about the knowledge fund. Is the knowledge bank contained within the—

MR QUINLAN: I am about to enumerate knowledge bank grants to the interactive entertainment industry, Mr Speaker. Some examples of grants include the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, $100,000; Irrational Games, $100,000; Panther Games Pty Ltd, $100,000; the ACT Film and Television Council, $40,000. We have also spent $25,000 on an export program assisting industry attendance at various conferences. In total we have spent over half a million dollars assisting the industry.

Mr Cornwell: How much did you spend on the Assembly, because that’s the real entertainment centre?

MR QUINLAN: We will have to lift our game, Greg, if that is the best we can do. By comparison, the opposition has recently come forward and said that they would prioritise this sector of the industry with $200,000. This was something new. Quite obviously, they had not done their homework.

We have seen almost 1,500 questions on notice in this place, most of them with many parts; so thousands of questions have been asked. Yet Mr Smyth can base his new policy

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