sentences:  By the mid-1990s the Australian Federal Government still had no plan for a permanent monument to be established in Canberra, thus the surviving POWs in Ballarat were prompted into action and began planning the building of a permanent memorial in their city to be largely privately funded and established with minimum government assistance.With significant support from the Ballarat branch of the Returned and Services League (RSL) of Australia, a local sculptor, Peter Blizzard, was commissioned to design a concept for the memorial.The vision provided by the sculptor was for a monument far greater in scale and scope than that originally envisaged by the veterans.