Page 5474 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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for the second round of funding, which will then be assessed independently. But the point I want to stress is that there are other festivals and other organisations who will potentially also submit within that second round.
I have seen circulated an amendment from Ms Le Couteur. I presume she will move it after mine is dealt with, so I will have an opportunity to speak on that at that point.
I think it is important to note the integrity of this process and the fact that the fund has been increased. I think it is always going to be the case that there will be more applications than there is available funding, and this is the case for almost every grants round that any government offers anywhere. There are always more applications, so it will never be possible to meet everyone’s needs. It is a competitive process but it is also a process that is built around the prospect of establishing new events.
I was interested and I was pleased to hear Mr Hanson observe that it is seed funding that organisations are seeking. It is not a suggestion that if you are successful in one grants round you are then automatically entitled to ongoing funding for the rest of time. We need to support new events. The idea behind the fund is to provide that seed funding, the opportunity to establish events, but then ultimately what we want to see is those events grow and become self-sustaining. I think that is the best way forward. It is the best way to utilise the limited funds that we have available to ensure that we are promoting a diversity of activity, that we support different events in the city, because there are a wide range of artistic, cultural and community events that receive support.
The festival fund is not the only avenue of government support for events, and I was pleased that a number of applications that came through the festival fund, which also had a tourism element, were successful in the tourism events assistance program. There are other avenues as well. But I note in the case of Weston Creek and the specific motion that is before us tonight that the Weston Creek community festival is a community festival, it is not a tourism event, and so it would not be eligible under that event fund.
But I do encourage the festival committee to meet with the festival fund team to have a debrief on why their initial application was not successful and to have a pre-application meeting. I am sure that the issues that need to be addressed can be and that they can put forward a good and competitive application for the second round.
I am not in a position to be guaranteeing any outcomes for anyone. In fact, as I have said in this place before, my attitude to the sorts of political interventions that we see in this place is to harden against that sort of intervention and say to people that if they seek that avenue to try to guarantee an outcome, to think that I will intervene because there has been a private member’s motion moved, that is in fact going to send me further the other way. I do not respond to that sort of intimidation. People have the opportunity to go through an independent process, and that is how it should be.
Trying to influence the minister of the day, using private members’ business, is a pretty poor way to get a good outcome for your organisation and I do not think that
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