{"id":12975,"date":"2019-08-29T02:04:03","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T02:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cultureheist.com.au\/?p=12975"},"modified":"2019-08-29T02:04:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T02:04:03","slug":"nsw-arts-policy-officially-in-ruins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cultureheist.com.au\/wordpress\/2019\/08\/29\/nsw-arts-policy-officially-in-ruins\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW arts policy officially in ruins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arm\u2019s length funding of the arts is the hallmark of a government attempting to work in the interests of the people. It prevents the arts being used as a political football, and together with peer assessment fosters the development of creativity. It was the founding principle in 1946 of the Arts Council of Great Britain, created by economist John Maynard Keynes and the Attlee Labour government, but came under sustained attack by the government of Margaret Thatcher (1979 to 1990).<\/p>\n

It was also the basis of the funding model for the Australia Council developed by the Whitlam government in 1973. The Council\u2019s website<\/a> still proclaims: \u201cPeer assessment and arm\u2019s length funding have been guiding principles of how the Australia Council allocates funding for more than 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Former federal arts minister George Brandis<\/p><\/div>\n

In the past six years Coalition governments have persistently undermined those principles. In 2015 federal arts minister George Brandis notoriously diverted $105 million in funding to a ministerially-controlled slush fund known as Catalyst. It caused such uproar that within two years the Turnbull government was forced to abolish Catalyst and restore some of the funds.<\/p>\n

But that didn\u2019t stop the attacks. Brandis\u2019s successor Mitch Fifield cut a further $5.4 million in 2018, diverting the money to a corporate \u201cCreative Partnerships\u201d project over which he had direct control. Labor, the Greens and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) all condemned the decision. (Council of Australasian Museum Directors website, 3 January 2018<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The cuts known as \u201cefficiency dividends\u201d, which have impacted core functions of national cultural institutions, have also bitten deep at the Council, leaving its overall funding at least 12% down and removing funding from entities as various as the magazine Overland <\/em>(Overland website, 16 August 2019) and independent Melbourne company Theatre Works (Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, 14 August 2019). Destabilisation of the agency is progressively eroding its ability to carry out its long-term strategic functions.<\/p>\n

The arm\u2019s length principle in arts funding is supposed to apply at State level, too. But in NSW, the Coalition government has abrogated the principle in ways that might make even George Brandis blush.<\/p>\n

Don Harwin\u2019s arts fiefdom<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Premier Berejikian\u2019s arts minister Don Harwin (pictured top of page) is logging up an extraordinary record of political interference in the arts by executive government.<\/p>\n