Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on what is undoubtably the most important part of the responsibilities of this particular department and its respective ministers; I speak, of course, of the arts. This is a budget which makes a lot of claims about what is being done for the arts sector, but when you look at the details there's a pretty big gap between the rhetoric and the reality.

I want to give credit where credit is due. Certainly, for all who believe that what the Australian arts sector is crying out for is more Commonwealth arts officials, more Commonwealth bureaucrats, this budget is certainly full of good news and good cheer. But I have to confess that, in my time as Commonwealth arts minister, perhaps I spoke to the wrong people but not once in three years did I ever have somebody say to me: 'Minister, what we need is more Commonwealth bureaucrats. That will really get more arts events, productions and festivals being provided all around Australia.'

When we were in government, on this side of the House, our focus, with programs like the highly successful $200 million RISE program, was on getting the money directly to the front line, to get as many shows, productions, festivals and events as possible occurring around all Australia. Indeed, 541 such events were funded by this government. But the present government is very, very keen on more Commonwealth arts officials and more money for buildings in Canberra, even though the reality is that many of those buildings will never be seen by most Australians.

One of the other things the historical record shows us is that record Commonwealth arts funding was seen in 2021-22, with more than $1 billion for the arts funded by the Commonwealth government. In this budget, sadly, this government has not been able to match that level of funding.

But we have seen, of course, more bureaucratic entities being established. We've had the Australia Council abolished and replaced with Creative Australia, but the overseeing body will now be called the Australia Council board. So we hope that's clear. Certainly, I'm sure that a lot of branding consultants spent a lot of time thinking about exactly how to achieve that outcome.

What we also know of this budget is that, of the money that's been claimed to be provided for a range of programs, much has been funded through cancelling programs that were very successful under the previous government—for example, the Temporary Interruption Fund and the balance of the Location Incentive program; both have been cancelled.

What we've also seen in this budget and under the current minister—and I have to say it's very disappointing that the arts minister is not here; he's also Leader of the House, so he's got no excuse, in terms of not being aware of when this fitted into the parliamentary agenda, so it's very disappointing he's not able to be here—are some rather curious approaches. For example, in the last budget under the coalition government, March 2022, there was an extra $20 million provided for the RISE fund. So there was money ready to be spent immediately upon the new government coming to office, to fund new events and productions, festivals and shows all around the country. Bizarrely, the minister chose not to spend it. But things got even more bizarre when we got to the October budget because then there was the proud announcement of the Live Performance Support Fund. It turned out that that was supposedly going to be part of the broader 'supporting the arts' program. Apparently, this was going to support shows that might be under threat because of COVID. Nothing more was heard of it, and then, in the budget in May this year, that program met its untimely demise without one dollar having been spent—one of the many mysteries of Burkean arts administration.

Let me ask the following questions in relation to Creative Australia: How many additional bureaucrats will be funded by this budget and how much will that cost? How many positions will there be on the Australia Council board? How many people will be on each of the new sub-entities being established within Creative Australia, formerly the Australia Council? What will be the additional cost incurred for all of those people? What will be the amount of funding, after the bureaucrats have been paid, which will actually go to artists to deliver performances, events, festivals and exhibitions? What happened to the $20 million of extra funding that was there for RISE? What happened to the Live Performance Support Fund? These are enduring mysteries of Burkean arts administration, Deputy Speaker, and I'd suggest to you that now is a time when these mysteries could be cleared up, and the Australian people would be well served if that were to happen.

See this speech in context