I’m going to hand in my Australian passport and move to Canada where the first thing the incoming Trudeau Government did was double funding to the arts.
In this Australian election cycle, why have we not seen a political party devise an arts policy whereby Australia Council’s resources are tripled?
Australia is fast becoming something that resembles the old Soviet Union where so-called dissident voices, like artists, were silenced through imprisonment. In modern day Russia, members of the band Pussy Riot were convicted and jailed for “undermining the moral foundations” of the nation – as Putin stated.
In Australia, we may not imprison troublesome artists – we simply stifle them and diminish their artistic expressions.
Whilst doing this, the current Liberal Party leader claims Australia to be a vibrant and innovative country.The ‘culture war’ money raids on the Australia Council by Liberal Party Arts Ministers George Brandis & Mitch Fifield has created a catastrophic outcome for the visual arts in South Australia.
Under Turnbull’s Liberal government, The Ministry for the Arts, through the Catalyst Fund, made a politically motivated payment of $1m dollars to a privately owned house that supports DEAD South Australian artists.
And just recently, the embittered Australia Council, through its four-year funding round, defunded the two independent community owned contemporary visual arts organisations that have supported living South Australian artists for generations.
Without a discretionary slush fund, Federal Arts Ministers tend to get a bit confused as to what their actual Ministerial role is in society
One of those defunded organisations is Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF), of which I am the Director. AEAF has received continuous operational support from State and Federal Governments of all political persuasions since its establishment in 1974 – that’s 42 years.
AEAF is the longest running publicly-funded independent visual arts organisation in Australia – it began when Senator Brandis was driving around on his ‘P’ plates aged 17.
Under Arts Minister Simon Crean, the Australia Council was sledgehammered into submission by the former Labor Government to abolish the Australia Council Art Form Boards.
The incoming Liberal Party continued the attacks on the Australia Council claiming arts funding was a ‘mates only’ game and the Australia Council was forced to introduce a Peer Panel assessment process to assess funding applications.
The recent four-year funding round to organisations has proved the Peer Panel assessment process to be a dysfunctional process that potentially gives Australia Council staff unbridled influence over decisions. For example – during the recent four year funding round the South Australian Peer representative was not in the room when my organisation’s application was assessed. Why then bother having a representative from South Australia?
The now crippled Australia Council needs to be scrutinized for its inability to properly manage its Peer Panel assessment process.
The Council has reneged on one of its own stated claims of maintaining a geographic spread – the three smallest contemporary visual arts jurisdictions SA, NT and ACT have now been wiped off the map of Australia. The Australia Council four-year funding result has seen an unfair bolstering of financial resources once again to the arts in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
One of Crean’s biggest mistakes as Arts Minister was to not leave behind a small slush fund, say $10m for incoming Arts Minister, when he moved much of The Ministry for the Arts funding programs to the Australia Council. Without a discretionary slush fund, Federal Arts Ministers tend to get a bit confused as to what their actual Ministerial role is in society.
Many small-to-medium arts organisations across the country are now paying the price for this with the abhorrent abuse of the Catalyst Fund. Labor’s new arts policy of dismantling Catalyst and returning all remaining funds to the Australia Council should be applauded. But let’s wait and see if this promise is upheld and how much Catalyst funds are actually left!
The now defunded organisation that I represent was reliant on a mere $125,000 per year of Australia Council core operational funding from the Federal Government.
Newton’s Third Law – for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As a result of the loss of federal funding, my organisation is now in jeopardy of losing the $130,000 that we receive from the South Australian Government.
Historically, federal funding enabled us to leverage state funding and as a result of losing the federal funding the SA Minister for Arts is now reviewing our current funding agreement. It is likely that we will see a reduction in State Government support even if we were to survive.
Some might argue that the arts do not deserve public subsidy. OK then lets not publicly subsidise sport, the mining industry or the agricultural industry. Malcolm Turnbull yesterday announced $5m to upgrade a suburban football oval in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs.
In 2014 an independent report commissioned by the Australia Council found that more than four in five Australians agree that the arts make for a richer and more meaningful life. It also found that more Australians participated in arts and culture than sport.
The arts are equally important in providing jobs, healthy and resilient societies and economic growth.
Last year the Federal Government discontinued a $9m a year taxpayer subsidy to a private company to keep the Ghan train whistling along the tracks between Adelaide and Darwin. In terms of governments paying private businesses public subsidy to stay afloat and satisfy shareholder expectations, the Ghan is a very small example – think of the 100’s of millions given to the car industry over the years.
Small organisations like ours do not have the capacity to absorb such public subsidy cuts, for us it threatens closure.
I will now prepare a message to the 50,000 annual visitors to our one small arts organisation, the thousands of social media members and the thousands of artists that we support asking them to be very careful how they vote at the 2 July election.
My message will be to vote for the political party that best takes the arts seriously – it could be The Arts Party, Australian Greens or Labor, but definitely not the Liberals.
Now that I don’t have a job I’m going to fill in my visa application to Canada.
