SPEECH: ADDRESS TO THE ARTS INDUSTRY COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA

Acknowledgements

This conference could not have come at a more appropriate time for the arts and culture sector in Australia.

We’re coming out of what we dearly hope is the worst of COVID.

A federal election in either March or May of next year.

And we have a unique opportunity now to ask and focus on some of the really big questions.

Where are we now, after two years of COVID and nearly a decade of Coalition government?

What have we learned about the value Australians place on arts and culture?

How do we rebuild, and what exactly are we aiming for in that rebuilding process?

It is important to acknowledge that parts of the arts and culture sector have not been able to move past the crisis phase.

In New South Wales and Victoria, the damage is really deep.

Even states like yours which have escaped the worst lockdowns have been affected by border closures and continuing density requirements. It’s a real frustration I have that often we hear the Treasurer or the Prime Minister talk about everything opening up as though a per square metre ratio doesn’t mean that some events are simply not profitable, not economic, because of the restrictions.

The end of lockdowns doesn’t mean the end of problems for the sector.

Although venues are re-opening and performances are back on, lingering capacity restrictions can make it hard to turn a profit, and there is little ability to plan for the future.

So any discussion of where we go next, needs to acknowledge that some parts of the arts and culture sector are still not able to move forward.

Challenges for the sector didn’t begin with COVID.

I was Arts Minister in the last Labor Government.

My immediate role was to implement Creative Australia.

The first cultural policy for Australia since the Keating Government had launched Creative Nation.

As you all know, cultural policy is more than some funding announcements for the arts.

When you get it right it affects our health policy, our education policy, our environment policy, foreign affairs, trade, veterans affairs, tourism.

Because a nation with a strong cultural policy is a nation where we know ourselves, know each other and invite the world to better know us.

When people reflect on the man who replaced me as Minister, George Brandis, the conversation often goes to the Brandis cuts to the Australia Council.

Those cuts were deep.

They smashed many parts of the small, medium and independent sector.

But they weren’t the worst thing that happened.

Silently, but immediately, Australia went back to having no cultural policy.

There were no guiding principles for why supporting culture in this nation was essential.

No understanding of our story tellers recording our narrative, no understanding of our visual artists reaching into our soul, no care for performance artists challenging us, no regard for our musicians providing the soundtrack to life in Australia.

It explains the context of how we reached a situation where we have a government that principally sees the work of artists as a hobby. Not real work.

The study and training of artists is seen as an indulgence not training people for real jobs.

And even when making the largest funding announcement for the arts that this government has made, Mr Morrison felt obliged to justify the funds on the basis there were tradies working on the sets.

In April this year, Arts Minister Paul Fletcher made a speech to the Sydney Institute. It made headlines because he criticised the arts as being too inner-city centric, something that was ironically a direct result of the Brandis cuts.

But the journalists who reported on the speech missed what I think is the key paragraph, right at the end: “We did not want to have a pandemic. But it has given an opportunity for a significant re-imagining of the Commonwealth’s approach to the arts.”

Whatever the government is imagining, artists aren’t playing lead roles in the story this government wants to write.

During the pandemic, Labor pushed hard for wage subsidies during lockdowns. But if you wanted to design a wage subsidy that excluded as many artists as possible, JobKeeper would be the program.

JobKeeper was indispensable to those people that it reached but it failed to capture the patterns of employment that are most common in those industries: multiple short-term contracts with different employers, casual and seasonal work.

We warned the government of these problems but they failed to act.

Laughably now, the Minister Paul Fletcher is trying to claim he provided $10 billion in JobKeeper and business support to the arts in the early part of the pandemic.

How does he get to the $10 billion figure? He includes as arts workers was people in clothing and footwear retailing, manufacturing and wholesaling; zoological and botanical services; newspaper publishing and architectural services all in that figure just to name a few. There will be a whole lot of people selling clothes at Best & Less who are astonished to find out that Paul Fletcher is their dedicated Minister.

Then you had the RISE grants which took six months to actually hit anyone’s pockets, and which pushed money to events that, during 2021, couldn’t actually be put on. And the way the grants were designed, money went to promoters and sat there – not to the artists or to suppliers.

The single biggest piece of the government’s so-called ‘rescue package’ was $90 million worth of subsidised loans, which barely got off the ground. In the month before it finished, only $7.8 million out of that $90 million had been spent. The government tried to spin this as a sign they’d done so well in giving the sector support that the loans weren’t necessary – to which my response is, pull the other one.

The strongest impression would be one of absence, or of drift. The government haven’t done enough – not enough funding, not enough support during the COVID crisis for the arts, not enough of anything.

But that impression that it just wasn’t enough would be wrong. If that’s all it was we’d be in a better place right now.

Close observers of Australian arts and culture know there is something deeper and more destructive at play. When the Minister says he wants “a significant re-imagining of the Commonwealth’s approach to the arts”, that is not something said lightly. It has meaning. It is deliberate.

I want to make this point: given how extraordinary and damaging the COVID period has been for arts and culture, it’s easy to forget that things were difficult beforehand – that the sector had been pushed to the brink by Coalition funding cuts and neglect, and was more vulnerable to the shocks of COVID for that reason.

The relentless attacks by the coalition on the Australia Council, starting with Brandis, had left it diminished and lacking the financial firepower to properly serve the Australian arts community.

In the most recent round of four-year funding grants, announced in April 2020, the number of small to medium arts organisations to receive funding was down by a quarter. These grants are a lifeline for the small to medium sector, and that lifeline was cut – and just before COVID hit.

At the end of 2019, the federal government had even removed the word ‘arts’ from appearing in the name of any federal department, with the Office for the Arts ending up in the same mega-department as infrastructure and transport.

So coming into the early months of 2020, morale was very low.

To map the trajectory of the federal government’s ideological attacks on the arts, you have to start in the obvious place: George Brandis and Catalyst.

Now, Mr Brandis was not quiet about his agenda for the arts.

He wanted to re-make it in his own image, and he did so by ripping $105 million out of the Australia Council and creating his own discretionary fund.

The impact on those organisations which depended on Australia Council funding was severe. In the 2016 round of four-year funding grants, 62 organisations lost funding – including your very own Vitalstatistix, Slingsby Theatre and Contemporary Art Centre South Australia.

The intent was so clear, and the means so destructive, that the backlash was swift and strong.

The government was eventually shamed into abolishing Catalyst and returning at least part of the funding to the Australia Council.

Brandis is gone but a clear thread can be drawn from his actions to what Mr Fletcher has done in the last 12 to 18 months. There was also in the middle Mitch Fifield’s tenure.

The coalition’s agenda has not changed since those destructive days of Brandis – it just went underground and for some people became harder to detect.

First, Australia Council funding has not recovered from the damage done by Catalyst.

In the last Labor government budget in 2013, appropriations for the Australia Council were $223 million. In this financial year, they are predicted to be $220 million. So in nearly a decade, we are still not back to where we were – despite population growth and a significant increase in demand for grants.

Secondly, in the last two years, under the cover of the pandemic, we have seen another government funding model emerge to rival the arms-length, peer-reviewed Australia Council model, just as Catalyst did.

That is the RISE grant scheme.

Now remember for a long time the government was planning something worse than an inadequate response: it was planning no response.

We fought bitterly to demand a government response specifically tailored for the arts, entertainment and events sectors.

This fight seems a lifetime ago, but it is worth remembering that straight after arts workers had been asked to work for free for bushfire relief events, the government intention had been to offer no support for artists. When someone’s doing it tough we need artists to turn up and have their back – but when artists are doing it tough the government doesn’t view those as real jobs.

Under RISE, applications are made to the Department, which then puts together a shortlist of preferred projects which goes to the minister, who is the ultimate decision-maker.

The recipients of these grants have a clear commercial bent – some going to very large, for-profit companies who have never received, nor asked for government funding before.

Now, in making these points I want to make it clear I am not making criticism of the recipients of RISE grants.

There are thousands of arts workers, cast members, children’s entertainers and musicians who were extremely grateful for RISE grant money which helped keep them in their jobs.

The live music sector, which typically has not received much federal government support before, was one notable beneficiary.

But why individual grants are chosen by the Minister – that decision making process is impenetrable. Why some missed out and others, including some with no record of delivering live music made it over the line, is a mystery which can only be explained in two words: Paul Fletcher.

There will always be media and public criticism of decisions that the Australia Council makes. But I would rather have peers be making decisions about artistic merits than Minsters. Including when I was Minister – and I intend to be Minister again.

As Arts Minister I established the Office for Live Music, to provide support to what is generally considered a commercial sector.

It’s a legacy of which I am very proud.

Most of the improvements in policy for live performance which have occurred at state and local level over the past decade have been informed by the work of the Office for Live Music.

The reason we need to talk about RISE is not because it is inherently bad, although I know some take that view – but because it is so different. It is, I believe, part of the “significant re-imagining of the Commonwealth’s approach to the arts” that Paul Fletcher was talking about in his speech.

A “reimagining” where the Minister makes decisions about artistic merits to allow them ultimately to engage in a whole series of culture wars rather than to have a peer-reviewed process with the Australia Council.

The $200 million could have gone into measures that would have been a real structural support for the whole industry: a targeted wage subsidy, a live events interruption insurance scheme – both measures which I have strongly argued for.

But instead it went to a grants program which allowed the government to pick winners and losers.

That money could have also gone to the Australia Council. But it didn’t. It was given to the Department, to administer as a discretionary fund for the Minister.

These failings had real consequences. According to Live Performance Australia, $1.4 billion was wiped from the live entertainment industry nationally in 2020, a 70 per cent decline from the previous year.

A survey done by I Lost My Gig found 23,000 gigs were cancelled in July this year alone. The failure of the government’s COVID response measures is clear and devastating.

What will Labor do?

Last year, when it looked like we were coming out of the pandemic, Scott Morrison talked about a “snapback” for a while.

That was until it became clear people didn’t want to just go back to the way things were before COVID hit, and he stopped using it.

The same goes for the arts. We can’t just go back to the way things were before COVID. Because it wasn’t good enough then.

There are two things this government can do right now – no need to wait for an election – to help the sector.

Those are introducing a targeted wage subsidy to help the sector get back on its feet without the 12 month casual rule that they put on JobKeeper. And an interruption insurance scheme for live events. Anyone who engages in the arts engages in risk – and you’re on for that. But COVID shutdowns if a new variant arrives, those sorts of issues, are something that not only can you not manage that risk you can no longer get commercial insurance against that risk.

The sector has been lobbying the government for the insurance scheme since the end of 2020, but it is not too late to come to the table. You shouldn’t have to put a million dollars on the line when you’re planning a festival. There is a clear market failure here, and the government should act.

As an Opposition – which is a title I’m hoping we don’t have next time I talk to you – we have a big job to do when it comes to the arts.

The policymaking challenge is a difficult one – as I don’t need to tell you, the arts is in an extreme state of flux at the moment.

A policy written three weeks ago it would not be out of date.

But what is clear is that we need to rebuild from the ground up. And that’s going to require some hard work and bold thinking.

Conferences like these are just the start.

So my first task as Minister would be to listen. I want to hear from each part of the sector, around the country, what they need to recover and rebuild. It’s pretty clear that a stocktake of this kind will be needed, because it will take some time for the true impact of COVID on the sector to reveal itself.

Some companies that have made it through 2020 and 2021 because of government support may struggle in 2022. Personnel and skills shortages may only become clear when performances return to pre-COVID levels. And on the flipside, new growth and new opportunities will emerge.

Anyone who came here today expecting to hear clear announcements of future Labor government policy will be disappointed.

However, what I can give you are the principles that will be our guiding lights should we win government in 2022.

I have spent most of my time in Parliament in this portfolio now.

Indeed all of them until the pandemic presuming everyone understood the economic value of the sector and I saw my task as simply advancing the cultural value.

But what became clear last year the other side of politics doesn’t even see artists as workers and the companies as businesses.

It’s all hobbies and indulgences.

So let me start with a guiding principle that I’m a bit embarrassed even needs to be said: artists are workers.

Labor has never been blind to this reality.

We know that artists are the original gig workers, and you have been living in the world of insecure work for longer than many other industries.

I’m really glad that our industrial relations policies, which Anthony Albanese announced last year, will help workers in the arts and culture sector.

The measures include extending the powers of the Fair Work Commission to include “employee-like” forms of work, allowing it to better protect gig workers; legislating a fair and objective test of casual work; and working with state and territory governments, unions and industry to work out whether there are areas where portable entitlement schemes for Australians in insecure work.

Our second guiding principle: Australian stories first.

The current government has not just neglected Australian stories – it has actively undermined them.

The Minister never misses an opportunity to put out a press release about another international movie that has decided to temporarily set up shop in Australia.

It’s great that Thor: Ragnarok was filmed here. I love the movie, I think Taika is a genius director. It’s great that Young Rock or Joe Exotic can be filmed here and temporarily provide jobs to local crew.

I welcome the overseas productions and the jobs they provide. But it is trade policy, not cultural policy.

These are not Australian stories.

What makes this worse is that at the same time, under the cover of COVID, the government has been actively removing supports and incentives for Australian stories on screen.

First, under the cover of the pandemic, Mr Morrison’s government suspended quotas for particular genres of Australian made television, including children’s TV, drama and documentaries.

No-one bought his argument that these measures were temporary.

And we were right – because on 1 January 2021 they were effectively made permanent.

The Government shifted these sub-quotas onto a points system, which effectively abolished any requirement for original Australian kids’ TV and made it much easier for drama budgets to be cut.

He also announced sweeping changes to long-standing taxation offsets used to support Australian screen content.

At first, this included reducing the producer offset for feature film from 40 per cent to 30 per cent – with no consultation or apparent rationale.

It took famous faces such as Bryan Brown, Marta Dusseldorp, Justine Clarke and Simon Baker to travel to Canberra to campaign against that for the government to change its mind.

Then they tried to halve Foxtel’s Australian content requirement - think about that - tried to cut the drama requirement in half. They backed off but only after facing likely defeat in the Senate.

Now, the government is playing absurd brinkmanship with another piece of legislation which is sitting in the Senate right now, which combines a welcome increase in the producer offset for television but with some vicious cuts to other offsets that will affect Australian documentaries and the post-production and visual effects sector.

They’re trying to hold the sector to ransom, saying ‘if you get one, you’ve got to cop the other’ – which to me says everything about this government’s respect for Australian stories.

They are also trying to abolish the Gallipoli Clause - the clause that acknowledges many Australian stories are partly told overseas.

And don’t just think Gallipoli. Consider a story like Lion, or the first season of Jack Irish.

How a multicultural nation gets to the point of thinking Australian stories stop being Australian if part of the story is from overseas beggars belief.

Our third guiding principle: while Mr Morrison wants a culture war, Australia needs a cultural policy.

Labor has been the architect of Australia’s two cultural policies: Creative Nation under Paul Keating, and Creative Australia under Julia Gillard.

Labor believes in cultural policies, for quite a simple reason – without them, you make the wrong decisions.

Cultural policies give us a framework in which to develop arts and culture in Australia. They give us direction and momentum, and they are a statement of Australian identity.

Paul Keating understood that, when he said the task of Creative Nation was “to pull the threads of Australia's national life together, so we can ride the waves of global change and create our own".

We’re coming on a decade since the Abbott government abolished Creative Australia, with nothing to replace it.

It’s clear the lack of a cultural policy has given the coalition government license either to ignore the arts or to be actively destructive. Post-COVID it’s clear that now, more than ever, we need a cultural policy to give us the framework we need to rebuild, and the momentum to carry us forward.

The experience of the last eighteen months has been so tough.

Australian arts and culture, and the workers within it, are resilient. But even the toughest people have been tested.

We are at a crossroads.

And as we emerge from the lockdown phase of the pandemic our cultural life will change. The change will be led by artists.

But the foundations for that change, the obstacles, the short-cuts, the quality of the canvas that is handed to artists will be deeply affected by whether there is a change of government at the next election.

What the pandemic did was drive home how important the arts is for a lot of Australians. For their mental health and wellbeing, for their sense of identity. This is a moment worth grasping.

And while I have devoted my words today to policy allow me to steal the microphone for a moment longer on a personal level.

I’m one of the many Australians who has been carried by you during the madness of the last two years.

I’ve played your music, streamed your shows, bought tickets to online events, read you novels in the evening and your poems in the morning.

I cannot imagine a time when I have been more reliant on your work.

So thank you for what you do.

Thank you for the way you carried us all.

I intend to be in a position where an Albanese Labor Government can show you all the same level of deep respect you have shown us. Thank you.

ENDS