The Abbott/Turnbull Government is without doubt the most harmful one to the Arts sector since Federal Governments started taking an interest in the Arts in the late ‘60s.
Their approach has been haphazard and harmful. Three years of cutting swathes through the arts ecosystem with cuts that are tiny in comparison to the Federal budget, yet these cuts are devastating to the sector.
Less than .1 of a percent of the Federal budget goes to the Arts, but as much as a third of the total federal support for the Arts has been lost. That’s over $300 million dollars, including 64 previously deserving arts organisations left without their base funding on the Arts version of Black Friday (the Tasmanian Writers Centre among them), and 16,000 arts jobs gone this year.
If returned to power, between now and 2020 the Government plans for a further 12% reduction in Arts funding. This has all happened on the back of an independent report into the Australia Council in 2012, which found that there was a significant amount of excellent work not being funded due to the lack of resources. $75 million was recommended to be added to the Arts budget to address it. Instead the Abbott Government cut and Turnbull has continued.
Why should you care?
Well it’s not about paying people to do esoteric or pointless performance art that no one wants, which the critics of arts funding might have you believe. It’s a vibrant sector, which contributes $50 billion to the economy.
It includes an incredible range of activities including contemporary music, film, literature, visual and performing arts, and more. It comprises not only individual artists, but galleries, museums, venues, community centres, libraries, publishing houses, and other infrastructure.
It includes performers, creators, designers, directors, administrative and front of house staff, technicians, instrument makers and retailers and more – in fact it employs 230,000 people, as many as the mining industry.
Perhaps more importantly, the Arts contributes greatly to the quality of life and sense of identity in Australia and this is being lost in order to provide entirely negligible savings to Government. Tasmania, with the smallest population base, will notice the impact on lost touring, festivals and increased ticket prices for the few activities which survive, even more than any other state.
One of the stated aims of The Arts Party in joining the fray for the 2016 election was to prompt as many parties as possible to announce an Arts Policy during the campaign. We have substantially achieved this with Labor, the Greens and even now the Nick Xenophon Party having released arts policies.
The Arts are officially an issue in this election. Its clear the Arts Party has influenced this as Xenophon’s policy looks like a grab-bag of ideas from the Arts Party website, and the Greens have even credited us for one of the policies they adopted verbatim.
The Coalition, however, have failed to release a policy but nevertheless, they have managed to make their position clear.
The Arts is completely missing, for example from their innovation rhetoric and strategy, while the rest of the world seems to understand that engagement of artists and creativity in virtually any field enhances innovation.
It was embarrassing watching Prime Minister Turnbull struggle to answer Katie Noonan’s question on the ABC’s Q&A this week. He misleadingly suggested that his Government has increased Arts funding and claimed that any issues with snatching funds from the Australia Council Funds and giving a small amount of them to the Minister’s own grant fund, Catalyst, haven’t ‘come up’.
This was an astonishing claim given that 2,700 or so submissions were received by the Senate Inquiry into the matter. This seems to have escaped the Prime Minister’s notice entirely.
Arts Minister Fifield also spurned the opportunity at the recent National Arts debate in Melbourne to distance the Government from draft findings of the report it requested from the Productivity Commission. These recommendations would further compound difficulties for Tasmanian authors trying to make a living from their work by denying them the opportunity to sell publishing rights in multiple territories as they do now.
The report also recommends reducing the copyright period for published works to 25 years, rather than the 70 years after the authors’ death that is accorded to creators of other content.
This is a totally unnecessary and unconscionable change, that would mean anything published in 1991 would be passing out of copyright today, and the author would no longer be able receive royalties for the sales, or have any say in the use of their creative work.
The major parties would have you believe that a vote for a micro-party is a wasted vote. I would contend the opposite, however, that it is the most effective way to have your voice heard.
If you believe we live in an economy, rather than a society, and that the Arts, in all its myriad forms, has no value, then we are probably not the party for you. If, like me, you believe that the Arts is a significant part of Australian society and you would like to see a Government that takes a more positive and constructive approach to the Arts, then voting for the Arts Party will send that message.
We want to see a million votes for the Arts in this election nationwide. That might not be enough votes to overcome the micro-party tag, but it’s a large enough number that Canberra will notice, and that message will be heard loud and clear. Your second preference, whatever you choose to make it, will then become your vote.
That’s not a wasted vote. It’s more like having your vote count twice.
• John Biggs in Comments: Excellent Scott. The Libs state and federal are utter barbarians — and not only with regard to the Arts. “Blue-tied bogans” as I described them in the Mercury and which it published …
• Hans Willink in Comments: Well said Scott, the Arts have always punched well above their weight in Tasmania and emerging artists in particular deserve support. When arguably the world’s best writer, Richard Flanagan, had to seriously consider moving to WA during the mining boom to earn a living, you know we have a problem. I also have a particular concern with Liberal changes to tax law that have severely impacted on indigenous art communities …
