Page 743 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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MR SPEAKER: I believe that is an open-ended question, Ms Follett. Please proceed, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I state very clearly that the Government has no intention of responding in the way Senator Bolkus would like us to respond and propose knee-jerk reactions to problems that have been inherited from his Government over many years and which are not solved overnight.
Mr Kaine: You are not going to respond the way the Leader of the Opposition would like you to, either.
MR HUMPHRIES: Precisely, Mr Kaine. We will be acting in this area, Mr Speaker. We intend to introduce food legislation at the earliest possible opportunity, and Senator Bolkus's comments do not help one bit.
Rock Eisteddfod
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister for Health, Mr Humphries, and I refer to some answers he gave yesterday on health promotion. He referred particularly to moneys allocated to the Rock Eisteddfod. Can he identify how much was allocated to the Rock Eisteddfod and how the decision was made on the relative priorities that would provide that money for the Rock Eisteddfod, particularly when there is already an equivalent production in the ACT of the Dance Festival which is supported by the ACT Milk Authority and which gets only a very small sum of money for support? Can you tell us how the decision was made to support this commercially-operated Rock Eisteddfod?
MR HUMPHRIES: At present I cannot say exactly how much was allocated. I think the figure was $30,000, but I am not sure. I will check that and get back to Mr Moore if I have misled him in any way. The reason that the activity was sponsored, particularly in advance of the establishment of any formal framework in which the Government can make assessments of claims on the health promotion fund - and I acknowledge that that framework is not as yet in place - was that it was necessary to consider ways in which the Government might provide for particular activities which, in the short-term, needed to be funded.
In this case, we discovered that last year Quit for Life, under another program, had sponsored the 1989 Rock Eisteddfod and we believed it was appropriate in those circumstances to ensure that it did not lose appropriate sponsorship. Last year's sponsorship was not available for this year. Therefore, we felt it was appropriate to allocate some money from the health promotion fund towards this activity. It is an activity which is embraced by the terms of reference of the health promotion fund. By the
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