David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to say a few words about this very important industry and the consequences of the Creative Australia Bill 2023, which we will not be opposing. I want to put on the record some of the achievements of the former coalition government. First of all, the national cultural plan that is at the heart of these changes is not a new idea. Many of us sat on the Standing Committee for Communications and the Arts and tabled a very significant report, Sculpting a national cultural plan: igniting a post-COVID economy for the arts, with the chair being Angie Bell. Yours truly was the chair during the creation of that report, but due to ministerial upgrades I wasn't there to table it.

During 2021-22, the coalition government spent $1.07 billion on the creative industries and the arts, protecting it through COVID. Between 2019 and 2022, the total COVID support was $1.153 billion: $400 million for the Location Incentive, $220 million for the RISE Fund, $187 million of new funds for national collecting institutions, $90 million for the Show Starter Loan Scheme, $50 million for the Arts Sustainability Fund, $50 million for the Temporary Interruption Fund, $40 million for Support Act, $33 million for Screen Australia, $31.9 million for the Australian Children's Television Foundation, $31.4 million for regional and Indigenous arts and $20 million of funding for independent cinemas. That is no mean feat.

The national cultural policy consists of quite a few re-announcements of policies that we announced and initiated, so of course we're going to support these changes. They've just rebadged it—they got rid of the Australia Council and called it Creative Australia. For instance, a 30 per cent tax offset for digital games production announced in the 2021 budget is announced as though it's something new in the national cultural policy. A commitment to stronger intellectual property protections for Indigenous arts and artists was also announced in October 2021, and a legislated requirement for Australian content on streaming video-on-demand services was announced in February 2022. We obviously lost the election, so we're not here to implement them, but a lot of these ideas had their genesis in that exemplary standing committee report that I mentioned and in the work of the former minister for communications and the arts.

My overriding concern with the re-creation and expansion is that I hope a lot of this money doesn't just go into more bureaucracy rather than supporting artists. I hope the new entities, Music Australia and the creative workplace entity, which will operate under the new entity, won't destroy the flexibility, nimbleness and freedom of the creative gig economy and turn it into a unionised workplace. As I said, the coalition won't be opposing this bill, but I want to put on the record all those matters and all the great work we did in the coalition, supporting the creative and cultural industries in this country. It is a huge industry. It deserves our support. We certainly did support it exceptionally through the dark days of COVID, let alone providing the support all the artists got out of JobKeeper.

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