Page 5471 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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and Recreation) (8.42): I thank Mr Hanson for raising this matter tonight. I have circulated an amendment to Mr Hanson’s motion that I will move now:
Omit all words after “That this Assembly”, substitute:
“notes that:
(1) funding is made available annually through the ACT Festival Fund;
(2) all prospective applicants are invited to have a pre-application meeting where all criteria are outlined and explained;
(3) all applications for the ACT Festival Fund are assessed by an independent committee and are assessed against the published criteria;
(4) all unsuccessful applicants are offered feedback sessions on the strengths and weaknesses of their applications;
(5) the 2012 ACT Festival Fund included $220,000 in available funding;
(6) of 31 applicants for this funding, 13 were deemed successful to receive funding totalling approximately $202,000. The remaining 17 applicants were deemed unsuitable;
(7) a second application round of the 2012 ACT Festival Fund has been opened to reallocate the remaining funding pool of $18,000. This round will be open to all previously unsuccessful applicants and new applicants; and
(8) the second round will follow the same application and assessment process as the first round and that of previous years, including the availability of pre and post-application meetings.”.
Speaking to that amendment, the amendment has a number of points, and I will speak to each of them in turn. Firstly, there is the statement of fact that funding is made available annually through the ACT festival fund and for the 2012 year that amount is $220,000. All prospective applicants for the festival fund are invited to have a pre-application meeting where all criteria for the fund are outlined and explained.
Point No 3 in my amendment, I think, is the most important point in relation to the assessment process for this fund, and that is that all applications for the fund are assessed by an independent committee and are assessed against the published criteria. And there was a little bit of a thread running through Mr Hanson’s contribution that somehow he believes there should be a greater level of political control exercised over this funding process.
When Mr Hanson closes the debate on this matter a bit later—and he is not paying attention at the moment—he may seek to clarify whether he does believe in fact that this festival fund should be allocated by politicians. Presumably, he would be arguing that the minister of the day should just simply go about making allocations on the basis perhaps of which particular events get political patronage and have motions moved in the Assembly.
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