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The Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications, which has responsibility for matters relating to the arts, has received 74 submissions for its inquiry into a new national cultural policy for Australia.
By Jacquelene Pearson
“Revive: A place for every story, a story for every place” was the name given to the Australian Government’s new National Cultural Policy released in January. It was intended to be a five-year plan to revive the Australian arts, entertainment and cultural sectors and was referred by the Senate for inquiry and report in February.
The initial June deadline for the report has now been extended to October but submissions closed in March and the two public hearings – in Canberra and Adelaide – have now been held.
The five pillars of the policy sound promising: recognising and respecting the crucial place of First Nations stories at the centre of Australia’s arts and culture; reflecting the breadth of our stories and the contribution of all Australians as the creators of culture; supporting the artist as worker and celebrating the artist as creator; providing support across the spectrum of institutions which sustain the arts, culture and heritage; and engaging the audience.
The centrepiece of Revive was the establishment of Creative Australia with an additional $199 million in funding over four years from the 2023-24 financial year. Its charter is to “restore and modernise the Australia Council for the Arts”.
So what have been some of the highlights from the 74 submissions received by the committee so far? We thought we would give you a sneak peak, given that the funding is supposed to commence from 1 July but the committee won’t be reporting until October. It’s been a long haul for the creative and performing arts sectors since 2020 and the onset of COVID so why wait?
Here are some of the comments so far:
The International Council of Museums Australia:
“The announced initiatives such as the commitments to First Nations artists and culture, re[1]instating cultural data collection, and significant support for the performing arts, literature, and workers’ rights are to be commended. The vision statement by author, Christos Tsiolkas, and historian, Clare Wright, is outstanding in its aspirations.
“However, the policy framework itself has some troubling gaps, such as overlooking the issues of climate change and sustainability, minimising the roles of heritage and the humanities, and understating Australia’s international cultural responsibilities and potential impacts.
“ICOM Australia continues to identify the lack of a national body to deal with the needs of our great collecting institutions and local and regional institutions that preserve, present and promote creativity and knowledge of our history, heritage, environment and society. Such a body would address a significant gap and bring Australia into line with other comparative economies.”
Live Performance Australia:
“Revive includes welcome initiatives to guide public investment in Australian arts, culture and creativity over the medium to longer term. Several of the policy initiatives in Revive respond to the advocacy of LPA and other industry groups.
“However, Revive does not fully address the immediate challenges for our industry, including skills and training, business recovery, rebuilding financial reserves, incentives for new investment, and practical actions to support safe workplaces.
“It will take time for the new governance arrangements set out in Revive, including the establishment of Creative Australia and new bodies such as Music Australia and the Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces, to be finalised and for their strategies and funding priorities to be determined and actioned…
“As a general observation, we also note the policy is effectively silent on the contribution of our live performing arts industry to Australian culture and creativity. For example, the policy does not make any reference to critically important investment frameworks such as the National Performing Arts Partnership Framework (NPAPF) or the Australia Council’s Four Year Funding (FYF) program and other grants which are crucial to developing and sustaining a diverse and vibrant performing arts industry.
“The NPAPF and FYF represented 77 per cent of Australia Council investment in 2021-22, yet Revive does not address in any detail the strategic direction for these funding programs in the future.
“LPA welcomes the restoration of $44 million in funding to the Australia Council which was lost to budget cuts in 2014. However, Revive does not provide clear direction on how this funding should be purposed, and whether this will be available for the performing arts. The policy needs a stronger articulation of support for the culturally, socially and economically important contribution made across the breadth of not-for-profit and commercial performing arts organisations, from our small to medium companies through to our national organisations of global stature.”
National Association for the Visual Arts:
“NAVA is celebrating: general positivity and optimism, a significant shift felt after the launch of the policy; endorsement of NAVA’s Code of Practice for Visual Arts, Craft and Design, however a legislated industrial Award for artists and arts workers is urgently needed to ensure enforceable minimum employment and payment standards; opportunity for a legislated Visual Arts Award as part of the Modern Award Review process; First Nations First offers a firm infrastructure to complete the necessary work on enshrining protections for First Nations artists nationally to protect art styles and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP), as well as embedding a framework of autonomy and self-determination…
“NAVA joins many voices in the arts sector who are concerned about the risk of this policy being discontinued under a change of government. What we really need is bipartisan policy. National Cultural Policy offers certainty on direction and funding which gives the cultural sector the security to grow and thrive. Bipartisan support of the national cultural policy would cement this certainty…
“NAVA’s recommendations: establish an Award rate for the visual arts, craft and design sector that mandates the adequate payment of artists and arts workers for their work and includes standard entitlements (including superannuation for gig workers and portable long service leave) as recognised under the national workplace relations system; implement policies and measures that recognise and mandate the rights of artists to receive artist fees for the commissioning of new works loan or royalty fees for the display of existing artwork in exhibitions, licensing fees for the use of images of their artwork and design in publications and on products and merchandise, wages for the administrative work associated with their practice, ensuring the full costs of working as an artist are remunerated.
“Increase the budget allocation: while the return of funds to the Australia Council is to be celebrated, there is concern about the lack of detail in how the $199m will be applied and what investment will be available for practicing artists and sector organisations after the establishment of the four new centres. The new policy makes no mention of investment in Australia’s living visual artists. A fifty per cent increase or more is urgently needed to support operational funding to small to medium organisations across the visual arts, craft and design sector. o Funding for existing peak bodies, support agencies and service organisations needs to be permanently increased to expand professional development programs for artists and arts workers.
“Invest in infrastructure for existing public galleries which are in a state of crisis with understaffing, dilapidated buildings, a lack of resources for art conservation and programs that are not able to meet demand…”
A New Approach:
“The bipartisan proposal for a Productivity Commission inquiry ‘into the legislative arrangements which govern funding of artistic programs and activities at all levels of government’ should proceed. The terms of reference should include: a cost-benefit analysis of the cross-sectoral enablers of productivity identified in the 5-year productivity inquiry, as they specifically apply to arts and culture; identifying a target for prescribed government expenditure; consideration of the benefits of including art and culture government services in the Report on Government Services; to ‘preserve’ and ‘strengthen’ the financing of culture – declared a “global public good” – review other examples of outstanding public investment, focusing on those countries that invest above the OECD average.
“In the context of the new cultural policy, existing patterns of cross-portfolio investment and the international evidence of impacts across broad public policy agendas, the government should prescribe that a percentage of total government expenditure be directed towards cultural funding in a coordinated and intentional manner. The aforementioned Productivity Commission inquiry should provide a recommended target percentage.
“To support the inclusion of cultural measures within the Measuring What Matters Statement, and the implementation of the new National Cultural Policy: conduct an environmental scan that builds and regularly updates our shared understanding of the dynamic health and economic pressures on Australian arts and culture (both supply and demand), and where the investments will be most effective; survey cultural funding by governments and quantify the economic contribution of cultural and creative activity every year. To enhance transparency of these investments, experiment with reporting on the National Cultural Policy’s performance and deepen the granularity of the data collection and reporting instruments (e.g., add reporting ‘by portfolio’ and ‘by postcode’); include in forward estimates a funding envelope to support delivery of a multi-decadal plan to establish an infrastructure and workforce development pipeline (specifying short, medium, and longer-term goals and minimum required investment over multiple decades).”
Per Capita:
“Access to, and participation in cultural events is a social justice issue, for creative industry workers, and for the public. Australians living outside of capital cities, with lower levels of education, and lower household incomes attend cultural activities at a lower rate than their counterparts. Socioeconomic factors inhibit access to the arts, and thus, to the coinciding benefits the arts can provide to health, social cohesion, and community building. This is recognised in one of the Policy’s ten guiding principles: that ‘[a]ll Australians, regardless of language, literacy, geography, age, or education, have the opportunity to access and participate in arts and culture’…
“Per Capita submits that within the actions enumerated in the Policy, a stronger focus on audience access to live performance should be considered, to promote further access for all Australian to participate in arts and culture, regardless of socioeconomic status…
“Theatre is unique to other artforms, incorporating multiple disciplines into one. It is deeply intimate and unique in its nowness. As the fourth wall crashes down, audience and players are locked in a shared experience; where no two performances are ever the same…
“Diversity is front and centre in this report, and whilst language, literacy, geography, age, or education all contribute to socioeconomic disadvantage in our community, more emphasis should be placed on investigating and correcting barriers to access so that everyone can experience the social benefits (individual and societal) of viewing live theatre.”
Australian Society of Authors:
“The ASA is very supportive of the establishment of Writers Australia, which is due to commence activities in 2025. Writers Australia represents an exciting opportunity to elevate literature, to set some sector-specific priorities, and embed long-term funding and a whole-of-government approach under specialist direction. We welcome better strategic engagement with all stakeholders – publicly funded, philanthropic and commercial – in an overall national vision for literature. Writers Australia provides the opportunity for a government-industry partnership and, hopefully, coordinated funding through co-investment agreements with the states and territories.
“Pleasingly, $19.3 million in funding represents a substantial increase of investment in literature. Importantly, Writers Australia will be able to commission much-needed research and advocate to government on behalf of the literary sector. To future-proof our book industry, we should look to models in overseas markets where authors enjoy more sustainable professional lives than in Australia.”
Screen Australia:
“The design of content requirements is a policy matter for Government. Screen Australia’s submission to the National Cultural Policy consultation process suggested that Government consider: prioritising the needs of Australian audiences, while having strong regard for the cultural benefits of reaching international audiences, and for economic and business outcomes; focusing on the ‘at risk’ genres of drama, documentary and children’s content, which are culturally valuable and subject to market failure any need for a specific obligation for children’s content, and the role of new targeted funding or further tax incentives; the importance of sufficient commissioning of content, as distinct from co[1]commissions and acquisitions, to guarantee competition and cultural outcomes; the suitability of current definitions of “Australian” content for a regulatory system involving international content services, and in an environment of growing foreign finance for locally-produced stories; important aspects of discoverability of content, and insights to measure how content is viewed by audiences; any need to modernise funding supports in response to the design and impact of new content regulations.”
First Nations Media Australia:
“Generally speaking, Revive’s focus, as in previous national arts/cultural policies, appears to be primarily on ‘professional artists’ and the ‘big end of town’ GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) institutions, with community arts organisations relegated to the sphere of local significance. This emphasis tends to overlook how these organisations, including community media and broadcasters, produce material and generate opportunities with multiple economic, cultural and social benefits that are as important for the creative economy and population of their community/region as are larger productions in metropolitan areas, and that this creative work may also be of outstanding quality and of national significance…
“While Revive highlights the importance of First Nations arts and culture as a voice and tool for truth-telling, it overlooks the role played by community broadcasters, particularly First Nations broadcasters, in the associated Pillar 1 action: ‘Support the telling of First Nations histories and storiesin Australia’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums’ (p.22). The framing of this action favours the role of GLAM-sector institutions in truth-telling and in communicating histories and stories over other organisations, forums and platforms, such as radio, TV or digital media. FNMA recommends that the omission of these additional formats and mediums be addressed in a revised national cultural policy, particularly since they provide vehicle for truth-telling and story-telling encompassing a broad range of spaces, including on Country, in communities, in living rooms, on buses, in classrooms – in fact, wherever you can listen to the radio, watch TV, read a newspaper, a magazine or a book, or stream content to your preferred device. Further to this, while one of Pillar 5: Engaging the Audience’s stated actions is to ‘increase support for community broadcasting to deliver local news, tell local stories, and provide a platform for diverse voices and Australian music’ (p.89), it is unclear from the Revive document how this will be achieved and to what extent First Nations broadcasting and media will be supported.”
What you can do
Submissions have closed for this inquiry and it is due to report in October. However, if you’re interested in finding out more, all documents can be found here https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/NationalCultural47
The Chair of the inquiry is Greens Senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young and the email address if you wish to send correspondence is [email protected]
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