ICANN has posted preliminary minutes of the Executive Committee's meeting on August 13.

Besides adopting the minutes of earlier meetings of the Committee, the Committee authorized the president to provide reimbursement to the Australian Government for its actual costs of providing chair and secretariat services to the GAC, in a total amount not to exceed US$75,000, for the period ending 15 November 2002 [...]

Elisabeth Porteneuve's comment on the GA list: Deux poids deux mesures? While the DNSO Constituencies provide 90% of the whole ICANN budget, circa 5 million USD, the DNSO have been asking ICANN Board to provide $100,000 per annum for the DNSO Secretariat. The DNSO function of developping policy for gTLD space is the main reason for which ICANN has been created under the MoU with the USG.

Michael Froomkin also has some remarks on this over at ICANNwatch.

Update: On a related topic, Steven Heath's "nz news & views" blog has a note on .nz funding "their" GAC representative's tour to Shanghai. David P. Farrar has posted a clarifying comment on this to the GA list.