MEDIA RELEASE - Labor’s underwhelming National Cultural Policy not backed by serious new money

 

MEDIA RELEASE

 

Monday 30 January 2023

 

Labor’s underwhelming National Cultural Policy not backed by serious new money

 

Labor’s National Cultural Policy, released today after many months of hype and rising expectations, is underwhelming.

Certainly some of its policy directions are sensible. 

The Coalition welcomes the greater emphasis on contemporary Australian music and the justified focus on indigenous art.

Both of these maintain directions pursued by the Coalition.  A substantial share of our $200 million RISE program went towards contemporary Australian music (over $68 million was invested in 170 projects involving contemporary music, including broader festivals containing a significant element of contemporary music.)  We released the National Indigenous Visual Arts Action Plan in October 2021, including a commitment to stronger intellectual property protections for indigenous art.

We also welcome the continuation of policies implemented by the previous government such as a 30 per cent tax offset for digital games.

But this, like much of the rest of the document, is simply a reannouncement of what we all knew was already happening. 

What stands out is that Labor’s rhetoric is not matched with serious new money. Labor’s media release claims $286 million in additional funding over four years, but according to media reports, $45 million of this comes from cancelling the Temporary Interruption Fund, meaning total new money is around $240 million or $60 million a year.

The funding level is conspicuously lower than the 1994 Creative Nation package which Arts Minister Tony Burke has repeatedly referenced.  That package committed $252 million in new money – adjusted for inflation, that would be $525 million in today’s dollars.

 

The contrast with funding committed by the Morrison Government for the Arts is stark.  New funding commitments during our 2019-2022 term totalled $1.153 billion, including:

•           $400 million for the Location Incentive

•           $220 million for RISE

•           $187.1 million for our National Collecting Institutions (in October 2020, May 2021 and Dec 2021)

•           $90 million for Showstarter Loans

•           $50 million for the Sustainability Fund

•           $50 million for the Temporary Interruption Fund

•           $40 million for Support Act

•           $33 million for Screen Australia

•           $31.9 million for Australian Children’s Television Foundation

•           $31.4 million for regional and indigenous arts

•           $20 million for independent cinemas.

 

 Our Liberal National Government delivered record arts funding of over $1 billion in 2021-22.  No other Government, Labor or Liberal, has matched this level of funding for the arts, and that remains the case after Labor’s announcement today. 

Labor promised that its national cultural policy would “transform” the arts.

Instead it has produced a document long on rhetoric but rather thin on specifics – and failed to back it with serious funding support.

There is no additional funding for our National Collecting Institutions, such as the National Gallery and the National Library – in contrast to the substantial amounts of new money provided to these vital national institutions by the Morrison Government. It is hard to understand why these iconic institutions are not considered worthy of support under a national cultural policy. 

The policy also establishes several new bureaucratic organisations – and of course every dollar in salaries for more government officials, is a dollar that does not directly fund arts activity.

And various mysteries of Burkean arts administration remain unresolved. 

Today’s policy doesn’t restore the $20 million in funding set aside by the previous Coalition Government for a seventh round of the RISE fund – money which could have been to work as long ago as June 2022 but instead was summarily cancelled by Minister Burke.

Nor does it cast any further light on Minister Burke’s rushed and bungled Live Performance Fund, all trace of which appears to have vanished.  Supposedly it was going to deliver funding for plays, concerts and festivals from November 2022 through to February 2023 – but there has been nothing to see here.

 

There is no clarity about whether the highly successful Location Incentive program will be extended once the current funding of $400 million is exhausted.

There is however quite a lot of the industrial relations policy into this document. Minister Burke is evidently keen to use the arts sector as a showcase for his wider agenda of increasing union power and entrenching new restrictions on the choices of Australians about how they engage in the modern economy.

In politics it is a good principle to underpromise and overdeliver.  With its National Cultural Policy Labor has done the opposite. 

ENDS

Further information: Jack Abadee 0403 440 099