Deposit wanted back

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33963, 2 October 1975, Page 6

Deposit wanted back

The Australian Department of the Special Minister of State is negotiating with the Hilton Hotel in Sydney for the return of a $37,000 deposit for a women’s conference which has been cancelled. This was revealed in a Senate estimates committee inquiry into the department’s spending in 1974-75 and its planned spending for this financial year, the Press Association reports from Canberra. Mr John Galvin, the coordinator of the International Women’s Year

Secretariat, told the committee how the deposit was placed when questioned by Senator Margaret Guilfoyle (Lib., Vic.). He said the deposit was put down for the planned United Nations interregional seminar on women, the arts and media, to have been held next month in Sydney’s Hilton HoteL The conference was cancelled last week. The Department of the Special Minister of State provided the Department of the Media with the

money—out of last year’s budget — and it was paid to the Hilton Group. Mr Galvin said: “I understand negotiations have already started with the Hilton to recover it.” The Prime Minister (Mr Whitlam) said in Canberra on Tuesday that regret had been expressed to the United Nations in New York about the cancellation of the seminar. But, he said, it had been decided preference would continue to be given to projects directed towards Australian women.