Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program: Honest History Factsheet No. 2

Minister Ronaldson’s media release of 19 June included these key points:

• $2 369 023 million in funding approved;
• 212 projects from 52 electorates approved so far;
• more than 1650 applications received, some from each of the 150 electorates.

The Minister’s release stressed the community basis of the Program and the focus on the next generation.

The range of applications received highlights the many stories that exist in towns and cities across Australia about the service and sacrifice of our servicemen and women during the First World War … These grants will assist communities to find out more about their local servicemen and women [and] young Australians understand that the freedoms we enjoy today, in many instances, came at the price of blood.

Details of individual projects are in the Minister’s release. There are further details in the spreadsheets on the centenary website although, at the time of preparing this Factsheet, the spreadsheets lagged behind the information in the media release.*

Honest History is particularly interested in the type of projects approved and what they say about the commemorative preferences of Australians. We have analysed the 212 projects below. The table is in the same format as Table 1 in the original Factsheet and the criteria are explained in the Appendix to that Factsheet.

Table 1: ACLGP projects approved (as at 12 June 2014) against eligibility criteria

To sum up, 58 per cent of the projects approved to date involve the building of new memorials and monuments or the refurbishing of old ones. These projects account for 62 per cent of the money allocated to date. (It is not always possible from the project descriptions to distinguish between building new memorials or refurbishing existing ones, for example, when the project is to install a plaque on an existing carillon or erect a statue in an existing memorial garden.)

There is a separate article commenting on the figures. As resources permit, we will prepare new further Factsheets looking at further approvals under the Program.

30 June 2014

* On this, DVA has advised (1 July) as follows:

The information contained in the Minister’s Media Release relates to grants approved to date. The information contained on the Anzac Centenary website relates to publishing requirements under the Commonwealth Grant Guidelines (dated June 2013).  In accordance with the Commonwealth Grant Guidelines and as noted on the Anzac Centenary website, details of individual grants are published on the website no later than fourteen working days after the grant agreement for the grant takes effect. As such, a timing difference occurs between when the Minister announces grants that he has approved, and when details of individual grants are published on the Anzac Centenary website.