In the lead up to Christmas, Creative Victoria told a number of arts organisations that their state funding will be sliced to zero.
The Creative Enterprises Program and other funding pools were so skint under the Allan Labor Government that funding to several arts organisations was removed entirely.
This night of the long knives for Victorian arts sector funding will long be remembered as a betrayal.
The hammer blow was delivered by Creative Victoria’s Chief Executive Claire Febey and her team. Just before Christmas, grinch-like news was delivered announcing that long standing funding would henceforth be cut to zero. No warning was given.
Victorian Shadow Arts Minister responds – quick links
Important organisations defunded
The multi-arts precinct Abbotsford Convent is a core cog in Victoria’s creative economy, providing creative spaces, employment and cultural experiences for Victorian artists, creative workers and the broader community – and has had its funding of $800,000 four-year funding axed to zero.
Writers Victoria has seen its $600,000 four-year funding slashed to zero.
Writers Victoria has received ongoing Victorian Government funding since its inception in 1989, and despite facing the threat of insolvency in 2024, the institution was successfully stabilised.
As Victoria’s peak organisation for writers, it plays a pivotal role in the ongoing support and development of literary talent and strengthening Victoria’s writing and publishing industry.
Now Victoria will be the only mainland state without support for a writer’s organisation and yet we claim Melbourne to be a UNESCO City of Literature.
Musica Viva Australia has also announced that its Strike A Chord program, which is not part of the Creative Enterprises Program, has had its longstanding state funding slashed to zero. Private philanthropy has had to step in to fill the breach at Musica Viva.
Why the funding cuts to Victoria’s arts and cultural sector?
There are three principal reasons that Jacinta Allan and Labor, through the hapless Minister for Creative Industries Colin Brooks and Claire Febey, are slicing Victoria’s arts and creative sector.
The most significant one is Labor’s inability to manage the state’s finances, with debt on a trajectory to almost $200 billion.
The financial chicken has come home to roost.
Central to this failure is Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan’s inability to manage major projects that has put the state into massive debt, with more than $50 billion of cost overruns on major projects.
These massive blowouts over initial estimated costs are increasingly funded by Labor through cuts to critical services. This now includes areas in the creative industries.
The second reason is the incompetent management and chaos within Creative Victoria.
When Febey was Director with the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, she was responsible for squandering billions of dollars in public funds during the hotel quarantine fiasco but was put in as the head of Arts Victoria regardless.
The third reason is that the Arts Minister appears unable to stand up strongly and insist the sector be properly funded, and with appropriate levels of funding directed to core arts and creative activities.
There is trouble across Victoria’s creative and arts sector. State Library Victoria has had a turnover of executives and has recently stepped back from an unfortunate plan to slash reference librarians, somehow forgetting its central mission, after a public backlash.
Creative Victoria’s Innovations Funding output saw its funding fall by 10% in this financial year (2025-26).
Other long-standing arts sector organisations like the Royal Philharmonic have been treated shabbily by the Allan Labor Government, turfed out of their long-standing home at the Drill Hall.
Read: Creative Victoria: backing or backing away?
These concerning actions, coupled with the move to completely slash funding to the key organisations named above, threatens jobs, programs and the very survival of organisations that have become pillars of Victorian cultural life.
Many across the sector view these cuts as an active undermining of Victoria’s reputation as the cultural capital of Australia, and a weakening of support for the independent creative precincts that have delivered long-term artistic, economic and community value to Victorians.
These cuts expose a Labor Government so compromised by its financial mismanagement that they are now gutting key Victorian cultural institutions to make up for their financial failures. It is time Colin Brooks and Claire Febey put away the knives and looked to properly fund and support key organisations that have delivered in Victoria for decades.
