Following the Budget announcement that $104.8 million will be diverted from the Australia Council to a new National Programme for Excellence in the Arts run by the Ministry, ArtsHub asked the Minister for the Arts Senator George Brandis and the Shadow Minister Mark Dreyfus to outline their thinking. The Minister declined, but his point-of-view was explained on RN this week. The Shadow Minister’s analysis is below. For more on what the change means for artists, read ArtsHub’s article, What the Australia Council cuts mean for you.
Arts funding decisions at arm’s length from government and free of political interference have been fundamental to arts policy since the establishment of the Australia Council forty years ago.
The Abbott Government’s 2015 Budget has now trashed that important principle. What makes it worse is that since the announcement Arts Minister Senator Brandis has sought to dress it up, this political attack on the artistic independence, as some kind of competition policy measure.
He bizarrely claimed on Thursday that by making himself the ultimate arbiter of artistic taste, it will broaden access to funding.
But clumsy sophistry cannot hide the fact that the losers out of this empire building by Senator Brandis will be small to medium-sized arts companies.
These are the ones that do not have the resources to navigate the red-tape of the parallel application process to the Australia Council and to Senator Brandis.
Said Australian director, Neil Armfield on ABC-TV: “They have less and less ability to – or profile to raise sponsorship. They have less time to develop relationships with government there.”
In Government, Labor strengthened the principle of peer review, merit assessment, and arm’s length funding decision making, through Creative Australia.
Last year’s unfair Budget took away Creative Australia’s funding. This year’s Budget attacks its basic principle as part of its short-sighted and political attack on independent funding of the arts.
Following last year’s savage cuts to the arts, Arts Minister Senator Brandis has now cut another $104.7 million from the independent Australia Council and transferred it to his own Department, for a so-called “Excellence in the Arts” program.
This year’s Budget has created a whole new parallel funding process without any published criteria or peer review.
Senator Brandis has long wanted to exercise greater control over arts funding. In 2013, in opposition, Senator Brandis tried and failed to amend the Australia Council Act to give the arts minister greater discretion in funding decisions. He has now achieved his aim.
George Brandis will be remembered as the Lord High Executioner of a Creative Australia.
Senator Brandis has also launched an outrageous attack on the judgement and integrity of the Australia Council.
He says that transferring funds from the Council to his Department, effectively to his personal control, will ensure that “government support is available for a broader range of arts and cultural activities. Arts funding has until now been limited almost exclusively to projects favoured by the Australia Council.” [emphasis added]
Apparently, in George Brandis’s opinion, the Australia Council exercising its proper function of peer review and merit based assessment is merely a matter of favours.
An additional $5.3 million will be taken from the Australia Council and be given to Creative Partnerships Australia.
Similarly, last year Tony Abbott took $6 million from the Australia Council to fund a new National Book Council, duplicating the Australia Council’s functions. No appointments to the Book Council have yet been made, and nor has any information about its functions been published.
On top of these backward steps for arts policy and process, there have been a further $13.2 million in cuts over 5 years to the arts budget, which will come from arts and cultural programs administered by the Australia Council, Screen Australia and the Attorney-General’s Department.
Senator Brandis has said that funding for the major performing arts companies will not be touched. I welcome that, but the implications are clear. There will now be less money from the Council’s diminished funding pool for individual artists and smaller companies, perhaps doing interesting, edgy, experimental work. I am particularly concerned about youth theatre – where will our performers and audiences of the future come from if we do not engage young people now?
Or will Senator Brandis take it upon himself to give tangible support to these artists? Somehow I doubt it.
Senator Brandis has also said his Excellence in the Arts program will emphasise attracting private sector support. I support and encourage philanthropy and private sector investment – the new Australian pavilion at the Venice Biennale is a great example of very generous private philanthropy. But I am concerned that a greater reliance on donations, bequests and so on will unduly favour the larger organisations with the resources and the public profile to attract such support, possibly at the expense of smaller and less prestigious groups.
Last year the Australia Council adopted its five year Strategic Plan, entitled “A Culturally Ambitious Nation”. Given that Senator Brandis launched the plan, he must understand how this budget’s radical change in arts policy will be hugely disruptive to the Council’s programs and administration. The funding cuts now mean that it will have to re-think its whole Strategic Plan, grants program and new six-year funding cycle, only just implemented.
I understand that these Budget measures blind-sided the Council. The Council has said that they will significantly impact the work of the Australia Council on behalf of the arts sector and that it will be giving careful consideration to how these changes will impact on its ability to deliver on its Strategic Plan, including support for artists and arts organisations through its new grants program and strategic projects.
For artists and arts organisations the new program will add another complication to their already complicated financial and grant-seeking lives. They will now need to make applications both to the Ministry and to the Australia Council, under guidelines still to be published or perhaps not yet even formulated.
Senator Brandis likes to say support for the arts is bi-partisan, supported by both major parties. That may well be true, but this year’s Budget shows a sharp distinction between Labor and the Abbott Government on how that support should be delivered.
Australian artists and the arts community have an important role to play in critiquing, challenging, reflecting and imagining the society we live in, what that society could be and what it once was. Labor believes in a strong and independent Australia Council, and an arts policy and funding process that is free of political interference and grants for a minister’s mates.
On the evidence of this year’s Budget, it is clear that the Abbott Government does not.
