Australia has regularly styled itself as a creative nation. Yet it ironically turns to a well-worn sporting metaphor to make the point that as a country it \u201cpunches above its weight\u201d in film, visual arts, literature, any number of musical genres including rock and roll, opera and even country.
\nAustralia spends precious little on the arts: less than $1.5 billion per year. It\u2019s a pittance and is the result of poor government, poor finance and poor business. Together believes the arts must play a leading role in our society and not be an underfunded policy extra.
\nAustralia\u2019s artists shine on the world stage thanks to the likes of Bangarra Dance and Back to Back Theatre. We have a growing role call of Hollywood royalty both in front of and behind the camera. Our opera singers perform at the world\u2019s most storied opera houses. Several Australians are nominated for this year\u2019s Tony (Broadway) awards. Our rock and pop artists top charts and sell out stadia Then there is \u00ad\u00ad\u00adCircus Oz, Circa and their soaring offshoots, multiple Booker Prize winners. It continues\u2026
\nMost of these artists benefited from public funding for development, production, touring, education and support. Arts funding is an investment in the health of our society, in our culture and a national sanity check.
\nTogether welcomes and supports Labor\u2019s new arts policy. Its aims are laudable, especially in supporting indigenous art, companies and artists, diversity in the arts and by restoring much needed funding to the Australia Council after thoughtless, or even deliberately damaging cuts.
\nBut Labor\u2019s answers are too pat with too little extra funding and muted, timid ambition. Together believes that in the context of responsible budgeting Australia can and must be bold by doubling the annual allocation to the budget to $3 billion per year. Anything less is tinkering around the edges of a worn and outdated model.
\nOur key investments would include:
\n$500m per year in small arts organisations and individual artists, to overcome the bias towards funding established institutions and artists
\n$250m per year in touring capacity so Australian artists can connect with audiences here and overseas
\n$250m in infrastructure for indigenous visual artists and indigenous arts administration
\nReinvestment of $250m in film for kids because that is where culture and identity take root – we must tell our own stories to our children.
\n$250m to support our music industry and festivals. We need to keep not just our cities and venues open, but our music culture in the regions
\nSignificant investment in the brave new world of digital arts both for digital creation techniques and emerging art forms, and using technology to enable distribution for audience expansion.
\nTogether\u2019s initiatives are not unfunded pipe dreams. They can be fully funded by trimming our expenditure on submarines and other major defence contracts that has seen this country\u2019s military spend go close to doubling the GSP percentage outlaid by Japan, Germany and New Zealand, as well as an overdue audit of massive outsourcing contracts for consultants in the public sector. An additional $1.5 billion per annum is more than manageable in a federal budget of $500 billion.
\nIt has never been more important to support the arts as our social fabric is tearing, yet it has never been harder for artists to establish a career. The debate around arts policy and funding must be informed by an understanding of how little we invest in the arts, how narrow the spectrum of arts and artist we fund and how much we have to gain by being much more ambitious to promote and engender a collective celebration of who we actually are as a nation \u2013 who lives here, how they live and dream and the industries they work in. The rewards will be almost immediate and resonate for generations.
\nListening to the current Prime Minister speak, landing on our shores for the first time or watching our election campaign, you would assess that sport in fact is culture. Sport is a big business and pulls in the big bucks in Australia.
\nTogether loves its sport, we admire talented people pushing themselves and their teammates to impressive heights and it is very much part of the complex fabric of our young nation.
\nThe creative arts are also big business and big bucks and most of those benefitting were once small companies or unknown performers who received a boost from the Whitlam government onwards. The arts are terrific for business generally, because the arts create jobs, supports families and communities of artists and there is further economic benefit for businesses that support them.
\nYet the context and conversations around the arts has matured and so we say again, its time for the government to step up and meet the challenge that so many of Australia\u2019s competitor nations in the west have been doing for some time now.
\nThe arts collectively provide a pitiless mirror into which a nation can gaze \u2013 it helps us understand whether we are heading on the right road or have become lost on a byway to nowhere or worse; whether we are compassionate and encompassing of who we are collectively or whether we have left some of us out of the national narrative.
\nThis is done, as it has been through the course of human history, through theatre of many kinds, film, television, painting, an ever-growing collection of musical genres, sculpture, multimedia performances, games etc. It\u2019s time Australia recognised this history and stepped up to make the arts an integral and non-negotiable part of our journey to a better Australia.
\nA final observation is worthwhile: nations which are on a solid core of metrics above or at least slightly better than average have a collective tendency to have a vibrant, challenging and throbbing arts sector. This is no coincidence. It\u2019s time for government in Australia to recognise that and act with speed and purpose.
\nTogether is a new party but not a niche party and has a comprehensive policy manifesto https:\/\/thetogetherparty.org.au\/manifesto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia has regularly styled itself as a creative nation. Yet it ironically turns to a well-worn sporting metaphor to make the point that as a country it \u201cpunches above its weight\u201d in film, visual arts, literature, any number of musical genres including rock and roll, opera and even country. Australia spends precious little on the … Continue reading “Arts funding needs doubling to $3 billion a year to protect and enhance the national narrative \u2013 crucial for Australia\u2019s future together”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}