An absence of values and initiatives for authors

MEDIA RELEASE COURTESY OF: Australian Society of Authors

2010 Election - An absence of values and initiatives for authors

The Australian Society of Authors is the peak professional association for Australia's literary creators. While the ASA welcomes yesterday’s Campaign Media Release from the office of the Minister For Environment Protection, Heritage & The Arts, we remain very disappointed that neither the Coalition nor the Australian Labor Party has made any substantial policy announcements in direct support of artists or authors in the run-up to the election.

The ALP campaign release has two sentences on the sustainability of artists’ careers, under the heading ‘Future Challenges’. For artists and authors, however, the challenges are here and now. The ALP proposes to allocate an ‘additional’ $10M ‘over five years’ to performance and visual and other artists, while the portion to authors of this very small amount is not stated. Direct support of our authors is weak and at a historic low, proportionately not even where it was 25 years ago.

The release points to the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards as an ALP achievement. But these awards are inconsequential to 99% of working authors. The ASA argues that meaningful support of authors requires new policy, further reform, additional funding, and/or additional legislative effort in at least three areas:

• the proposed National Curriculum;
• tax on artists’ and authors’ incomes; and
• the Australia Council.

NATIONAL CURRICULUM

From our authors’ perspective, the forthcoming national curriculum is in danger of becoming an Australian author-free zone. Documents produced to date suggest the old cargo-cult mentality still holds: that overseas material should make up the larger part of the histories, biographies, novels, plays, poems and films to be studied in our schools. Authors believe that the suggestions for text material should be thoroughly revised to take account of a single key fact: today more than 60% of books sold in Australia are of local origin. Our own story and stories, and their creators, should be given much wider and deeper attention in our schools and universities than what is being proposed by ACARA. In the project to educate our own children and future citizens, we do not see ourselves as the junior partner of other societies and cultures.

ARTISTS’ AND AUTHORS’ INCOMES

With a forthcoming new report from Throsby and Hollister expected to show little improvement in artists’ incomes over the past decade, Australia must pay greater attention to the economic circumstances of our creative classes. At a time when artists are struggling more than ever, government ought to consider serious reform of the tax system as it affects authors and other artists. If two pre-conditions for a ‘clever’ or ‘smart’ country are an education system that works and a culture that values creativity, an enabling tax system must be considered a third. There are some immediate and useful steps that could be taken in tax, such as exempting literary awards, prizes and grants from taxation. In this way the major political parties could provide a simple financial pre-condition desperately needed for a new artistic flowering in this country. The net effect on consolidated revenue would hardly register.

AUSTRALIA COUNCIL

The Commonwealth’s arts funding and advisory organisation is floundering across a critical area of its responsibility. Arts funding is currently only one of five ‘strategic priorities’ for the Australia Council. In direct support of artists, the Council is either under-resourced or risk-averse or both. An example: in 2009, the Literature Board allocated author grants and fellowships amounting to $1.65M. But as long ago as the 1980s the Literature Board provided around $2M of its total funds directly to authors – and that was a much higher proportion of its overall budget than current practice. In the dollar value of 25 years ago, an annual $2M was of inestimable assistance in nurturing a host of Australia’s most successful authors – Helen Garner, David Malouf and Tim Winton to name three. To develop a similar degree of output and talent in 2010 dollars would require at least $5M going directly to practitioners to buy writing time. Other art forms can tell a similar story of declining financial support. As the Australia Council is ultimately an agency of government, we ask the Commonwealth Arts Minister to attend to these problems as a matter of urgency.