Multicultural Grants Program

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:12): My questions are to the Assistant Minister to the Premier regarding multicultural grants:

1. What role does the Assistant Minister to the Premier have in distributing successful multicultural grants to multicultural associations?

2. Does the Assistant Minister to the Premier personally hand over cheques to any multicultural organisation that successfully applies for a multicultural (or other) grant?

3. When presenting a cheque, has the Assistant Minister to the Premier ever requested a multicultural organisation to specifically not invite members of the Labor opposition to functions and events?

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:13): I thank the honourable member for his continuous interest in multicultural affairs. He is doing such a great job; perhaps he would like to be the shadow minister for multicultural affairs. In order to answer the questions about the grants process: the grants are assessed by an independent assessment panel for various different multicultural grants. They decide which organisations are qualified on a competitive basis, and then what grants are allocated to those eligible multicultural organisations.

In terms of handing cheques over, I actually personally haven't handed any cheques over as such. Once the determination of the grants is approved, I sign off on the letter on behalf of the Premier and the cheques, etc., are then handled by the Department of the Premier and Cabinet under the office of multicultural affairs.

In terms of the certificate of approval of the grants, from time to time, based on the requests of the organisations—because they want to showcase that the organisation has been successful in receiving grants—sometimes they do print out the certificate and ask me to present those certificates of approval to the organisations at events, which I am always happy to do.

In terms of his ridiculous questions about not inviting opposition members, that is never the case. Sometimes I actually get really curious when opposition members don't turn up for events. I do actually ask the community leaders and presidents and say, 'Why isn't there any Labor members? Have you not invited them?' and they say, no, they invited them but they have not accepted the invitation or they haven't passed it on or they are not sure why they haven't turned up. That has been the case. Once again, I always welcome the opposition members asking me questions. I was told by my office yesterday that this now makes the 100th question that has been asked of me.