Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I would also like the minister to explain and justify the government's approach to the arts and creative sector—its apparent vendetta against the arts and creative sector. It's been part of their heroes-and-villains approach throughout their government. For some reason, the coalition don't value the arts. They don't regard creative industries as real businesses and they don't regard artists as real workers, never mind the fact that the sector employs 645,000 Australians and generates $111 billion annually; never mind the fact that arts and creative industries were among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Instead, under this government, workers were designed out of the JobSeeker program. There's been no effective targeted support. Even the artists the government used in media events have gone empty-handed, which is remarkable. It does tell you something: even in the cases where the government have made announcements like the Location Incentive scheme, they cannot bring themselves to talk about the people who actually work in that sector. They focus on electricians and carpenters, which are important tradespeople and they are important jobs, but would it kill the government, the Prime Minister and the minister to actually mention filmmakers, screenwriters, producers, stunt people and actors? Would it kill them to mention the people who actually work in this industry? Can these workers not be spoken about for any reason? There is only enduring antipathy from the government to those workers.

The minister should know that creative industries ought to be a foundation block in the broad task of building new jobs and even new export opportunities in the future, and yet the government treat the businesses and the workers in the sector with disregard and neglect. They've run down the Australia Council. They've relentlessly cut our public broadcasters. They were elected on a promise by the Prime Minister not to cut the ABC, and they've done that at every term. They've doubled the cost of studying arts and humanities and they've comprehensively ignored the specific needs of the arts and creative industries in their pandemic response. Minister, why is the government going out of its way to make life harder for creative industry workers, Australian storytellers and songwriters, filmmakers and artists, when they've been acutely affected through the pandemic and, really, they should be a key focus of our COVID-19 recovery?

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