Page 5477 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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(6) where he says that the remaining 17 applicants were deemed unsuitable. Canberra has a very well-educated population, and I find it really hard to believe that the majority of the applicants, 17 applicants, were unsuitable, while 13 were successful. In the briefing I had about this I was told that they were unsuitable because they had not managed to correctly fill out the form. There has got to be something wrong with the process. We have such a well-educated community that it is unbelievable that so many people would be unable to successfully complete the process. I agree it is a competitive process to get funding, but they should be able to fill out the forms unless there is something actually wrong with the forms.
Speaking more about the things in my amendment, I think one of the problems is that the government is too focused on big-ticket events and not enough on community events, small community events. They are the ones that are going begging, things like the Weston Creek festival. That is going begging here. We are not talking about a lot of money for the things that are going begging.
It is clear that the festival fund is not adequate for the demand on it. There was $650,000 applied for, whereas only $220,000 was available. My amendment asks for an increase in funding, because clearly there is the appetite and enthusiasm in the Canberra community to do more of this sort of thing. Festivals like this are great for getting the community together, for community cohesion, for sustainability in its broadest sense—social sustainability. As I said, it is not reasonable that two-thirds of the grants were unsuccessful because of forms not being filled out properly.
So what my amendment is trying to do is look at reforms to see a way of making this go better. We are looking for more money. We are looking for better public information about the methodology of ranking applicants in particular, a simplified process for applications, so that we do not get the majority of them not being compliant.
Particularly we are looking to facilitate group insurance for festival organisers because insurance is often a substantial part of the costs. And this would follow on from the ACT government’s successful innovation with community councils whereby the ACT government is in fact acting as a broker and bulk-buying. The typical community council, when I started here, was paying $5,000 a year, basically all their government grant, for public liability insurance. It is now down to about $1,000 a year due to bulk-buying. I would like to see the government look at doing this for festivals because this could substantially reduce the cost.
Almost in summary, I would like to pick up on one of the things that Mr Barr said. He said that the fund was very much focused on new and innovative things. I have to agree that is really important but it is not the only thing. If you look at festivals like Woden and Tuggeranong, and Weston, they are inevitably not going to be that new and innovative. It is the same community every year. And if we are going to have some sort of process that enables the districts of Canberra to run community festivals, we have got to have some different criteria, apart from the emphasis on new and innovative, because it just does not work.
It is 9 o’clock. I commend my amendment to the Assembly and pray we will all be brief.
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