After the Budget: The future landscape for Australian arts and culture
There will be immediate impacts from the decisions in the Budget affecting Australia’s arts and culture. Unfortunately the real damage will become apparent several years down the track when the cumulative impact of these various measures is recognised.
Compounding effect
There are a suite of cuts, far wider than the arts and culture area, which when combined and also continued over several years will have a compounding affect far more damaging than appears at first glance. There are measures listed under the heading of ‘Cross Portfolio’, which are not specific to arts and culture support but will inevitably affect it. These include an ‘Administered Programme Indexation Pause’ which across Government will save $15.1 million in the first year, $34.1 in the second, $54.9 in the third and $60.9 in the fourth. On top of this one measure ‘Efficiency Dividend – a further temporary increase of 0.25 per cent’ will compound the already deadening effect of the existing Efficiency Dividend, which was itself increased, ‘temporarily’ as well, by the last Labor Government.
The whole notion of an ‘efficiency dividend’ is itself government doublespeak. Organisations, such as cultural institutions inevitably find their responsibilities, their collections, their programs, growing as they expand their outreach and consolidate their roles. They rely on finding their efficiency savings to fund these expanded roles, not to siphon back to consolidated revenue.
Indirect effect
Beyond these measures there are changes in other individual portfolios which are likely to have impacts on the arts and culture sector but which are difficult to assess at this early stage. This includes current support for creative industries through the Creative Industries Innovation Centre under the Enterprise Connect Program and support by the ABC and SBS for content production in the creative industries.
It also includes indirect support for aspects of Indigenous arts and culture through the restructured Indigenous programs which are now part of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It’s also worth noting that $3.3 million will go to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to digitise its collection. This is a survivor from the National Cultural Policy, though $12.8 million was promised there. This seems to be the only other extra cultural funding in the Indigenous area and it’s interesting that it’s not part of Brandis’ portfolio.
It’s also noteworthy to see programs continuing that were almost abandoned by the previous Government, like the Australian Music Radio Airplay Project.
Reading between the lines the interesting feature of the Budget is which recommendations of the National Commission of Audit, such as ending support for community broadcasting, were not implemented. Whether that will change in the future will be the next question.
Major and unexpected
It’s easy to become focused on only the issue of funding. This was one of the major weaknesses of the discussion around the National Cultural Policy. Government, particularly national government, plays a highly varied role in support for arts and culture, of which funding is just a part. In many ways a comprehensive and coherent Government strategy to support Australian arts and culture by better coordinating all the support across Government would be more important than the absolute level of funding involved. However that’s definitely not evident here.
The long term impact of these changes will be major and unexpected, magnifying over time as each small change reinforces the other. In three years, six years, nine years, Australians will ask where valued and important programs have gone and how critical institutions have managed to diminish to the point where return will not be possible. The likelihood is that this will lead to irreversible damage to the contemporary culture and cultural heritage of the nation. During the Senate Estimates Hearing on 29 May, Arts Minister Brandis repeatedly stressed that the Government was not cutting any funding that had already been committed. However, from what he said, it seems highly likely that any programs that currently exist that would have had funding rounds in future years will find that there are no longer funds to distribute. Organisations that have funds for the next 12 months, or next few years if they have triennial funding, may find that the programs they have relied on for support no longer exist by the time their current funding ceases.
This is a way of cutting programs without stopping them outright. Instead it allows them to peter out slowly over a number of years, by which time it will be too late to complain.
In the arts area this is particularly likely to hit hard because many organisations rely on small amounts of funding from year to year merely to continue their base level of operation and many have been supported this way for many years if not decades. This is particularly true with small local Indigenous cultural organisations. They are then able to use the government funding to attract a broader range of support.
If you look closely at the budget papers there are some worrying expenditure cuts (see especially Budget Paper No. 2 Budget Measures 2014-15 http://www.budget.gov.au/2014-15/content/bp2/html/index.htm). Some are obvious. The Indigenous Languages Support Program has lost $9.5 million over four years. This was new funding in the National Cultural Policy to support the development by Indigenous communities of educational resources in digital format to help revive and save the threatened languages that are part of Australia’s core heritage.
Other examples are less straightforward. For example, listed under the Attorney-General’s Department, is a budget line ‘Arts programmes – reduced funding’. This strips out $4.4 million in 2014-15, rising to $5 million, then $9.8 million in subsequent years and then in 2017-18 reaches a massive $14.6 million. This budget line includes the relatively small number of programs managed directly by the Attorney-General’s Department, rather than its agencies, such as the Australia Council or Screen Australia, which are identified and trimmed separately.
A good benchmark for comparison, even though some years out of date now, is the summary of Commonwealth arts and cultural programs in the National Cultural Policy discussion paper released in October 2011 (http://creativeaustralia.arts.gov.au/assets/national-cultural-policy-discussion-paper-print.pdf). Some of the programs listed in this have been transferred to the Australia Council and others have changed but it’s still a good snapshot for comparison.
Drastic trimming or even cessation
For such a large reduction in funding from one year to the next, whole programs would potentially have to be trimmed drastically or even disappear entirely. Which ones are they? This budget line possibly encompasses any or all of the whole range of programs managed by the Ministry for the Arts. Amongst these are the two Indigenous culture programs, the Indigenous Visual Arts Industry Support and Indigenous Culture Support programs which are not separately identified, unlike the Indigenous Languages Support program. Are they affected? If so this could have a disastrous impact on support for Indigenous culture. A network of community-based Indigenous arts centres and an array of cultural activity across Australia have been fostered by these programs, often providing the only positive balance to the destructive impact of a focus on deficit models of Indigenous capability supported by both major parties.
Ever since they were transferred from ATSIC, the Indigenous cultural programs have sat uneasily in the Commonwealth’s arts and culture area as it has travelled across the public service looking for a home. Now, with an enhanced focus on ‘arts’ rather than ‘culture’, they are likely to sit even more uneasily where they are. With virtually all other Indigenous programs now bunkered down in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for these critical programs.
Article courtesy of Stephen Cassidy – for more info on Stephen and articles visit his directory entry
Responsibility for the information and views expressed in this article lies entirely with the author
