Dr Rhonda Jolly
Australia Council: restored
funding
There have been significant cuts
and changes to the way arts funding has been allocated in recent times.[1]
In the 2015–16 Budget of the
Government announced a new program, the National Programme for
Excellence in the Arts (NPEA), administered by the
Ministry for the Arts. Funding for this program was redirected from the
Australia Council, the Australian Government’s independent arts funding and
advisory body. This change was subject to criticism by many in the arts sector.
One reason for that criticism was that it was feared the program arrangements
would mean the Australia Council would lose its discretionary powers to make
informed and accountable decisions.[2] Criticism of the new
program and funding cuts prompted a Senate inquiry into their effects.[3]
The inquiry recommendations included that the Government take measures to
restore funding to the Australia Council and that it develop and better
articulate an arts policy to encompass priorities for Arts funding.
In late 2015, partly in response
to the Senate’s recommendations, the Government established a new program, the
‘Catalyst—Australian Arts and Culture Fund’ (Catalyst) which replaced the NPEA.
Minister for the Arts, Mitch Fifield, stated that the purpose of the Catalyst
program was to support Australian arts and culture by complementing existing
mechanisms, such as the Australia Council. [4] Under the renamed
program $32.0 million in funding was returned to the Australia Council.[5]
In March 2017 the Minister announced
that Catalyst will be discontinued and the majority of its funding restored to
the Australia Council.[6] In making this
announcement the Minister praised the successes of the program ‘in supporting a
broad range of arts projects’. He added, however, that the Government had
listened and responded to feedback from the Department of Communications and
the Arts, the Australia Council and the arts sector in making the decision to revise
the direction for arts funding.[7]
The Minister declared that the Government’s
new funding arrangements would allow the Australia Council to support small to
medium arts organisations.[8] According to the
Minister, it would also provide scope for the Council to address
recommendations from a recent Opera Review and consider options for funding
sustainability for Queensland Ballet and the Brandenburg Orchestra.[9]
Funding for the major arts companies, such as Opera Australia and the
Australian Ballet, made up 62 per cent of grants funding from the Australia
Council in 2015–16, and it appears that the Minister intends that funding for these
projects would be in addition to the support they receive annually.[10]
The Budget papers confirm that the
Government will provide $92.2 million to the Australia Council over four years.[11]
Of this funding, $10.0 million over two years will be provided from the
Australia Council reserves. [12] Funding of $80.2 million
will be returned from the Department of Communications and the Arts. The
Government has indicated that this will include the returned $32.0 million
previously earmarked for redirection to the Australia Council as well as $12.0
million in Catalyst funding agreements and $7.2 million for the Major
Festivals Initiative and the Australian World Orchestra. No further detail of
the remaining funding is available.[13]
Following the Minister’s announcement in March
2017, the Australia Council welcomed the ‘return of funding’. The Council said
the policy change represented ‘a positive long term change for the Australian
arts sector’.[14]
Some in the arts community are not as enthusiastic
about the changed direction for arts funding. Arts academic Jo Caust has argued
that the Australia Council lost $103.8 million under the previous
arrangements and the revised arrangements do not fully compensate for this
loss. [15]
Associate Professor Caust calculates that there is most likely a shortfall of
$14.0 million in arts funding.[16] She further questions
what she interprets from the Minister’s statement as conditions attached to the
restored funding—that it should be used to fund major arts companies like the
Australian Opera. She considers the funding should be focussed on individual
artists and the small to medium arts sector—the areas which she feels ‘felt the
major impact of the original cuts’.[17]
Live Performance Australia (LPA), the peak body for
Australia’s live performance industry, is pleased that this Budget ‘has
repaired some of the damage done to Australia’s performing arts sector’, but it
qualifies this support by making a point which echoes Caust’s criticism.[18]
According to LPA’s Chief Executive, Evelyn Richardson, ‘the harsh reality is
[that] cuts and uncertainty inflicted on small to medium performing arts
companies over the past few years have already taken their toll’, with a number
of companies de-funded by the Australia Council being forced to re-evaluate
their staffing and delivery of artistic programs.[19]
In Ms Richardson’s view, for some small to medium companies the restored
Australia Council funding is ‘too little too late’.
There is no legislation required to return the
funding to the Australia Council.
Cultural Institutions: additional
support
The Government has announced that it will provide $48.5
million over three years to support Australia's national cultural collections.
Funding will be made available through the Public Service Modernisation Fund.[20]
The agency sustainability measure of this fund provides $129.6 million over
three years to help agencies transition to ‘more modern and sustainable
operating models.[21]
The cultural support measure provides
additional funding of $8.2 million over four years to assist national cultural
institutions to deliver online initiatives, education programs and new
exhibitions.[22] Institutions which will
benefit are the National Gallery, the National Museum, the National Portrait
Gallery, the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Film and Sound Archive
and the Museum of Australian Democracy. (In the 2017-16 Mid Year Economic
and Fiscal OutlookDecember, the Government announced $20.4 million from the
Public Service Modernisation Fund to the National Library of Australia (NLA)
and the Australian War Memorial: $16.4 million over four years from 2016-17 to
the NLA for ‘digitisation of material and upgrade of critical infrastructure for
its Trove digital information resource and to upgrade other critical
infrastructure’, and $4.0 million over four years from 2017-18 (including $1.0
million in 2020-21) ‘to ensure that the [Australian War Memorial] can continue
to deliver its core activities’.[23] )
Capital works funding has also
been set aside in the 2017-18 Budget. The National Maritime Museum will receive
$13.9 million for projects which include work on heritage vessels and improved
disability access. The Museum of Australian Democracy will be given $13.6
million for building improvements and technology upgrades and the National Film
and Sound Archive will receive funds ($3.9 million) to assist in the
preservation of its collection.[24] This measure will
provide an additional $8.9 million to the National Museum of Australia to
enable it to establish a Cultural and Corporate Shared Services Centre that
will provide services to other collecting institutions. The Government sees the
rationale for this centre as producing corporate efficiencies which will allow
participating institutions to focus in the future ‘on the delivery of core
services and programs’.[25]
Academic Jo Caust has also
commented on this measure. She concludes that the Government’s
support of cultural heritage in this Budget ‘has been positive’.[26]
However, to date, there appears to have been no comments made on Budget funding
or particular measures by the relevant stakeholders.
There is no legislation required
to implement the cultural institutions measures in this Budget.
Producer offset
The Broadcasting and Content Reform package in the Budget
will deliver savings of $6.0 million over three years from 2018–19 by changing
the conditions of the Producer Offset (a refundable tax offset payment) for
films.[27] The Producer Offset is
administered by Screen Australia under Division 376 of the Income Tax
Assessment Act 1997 and the Producer Offset Rules 2007.
The budget measure proposes to change the conditions which apply
to the so-called ‘Gallipoli clause’ in the Producer Offset.[28]
The Gallipoli clause currently provides that in certain limited circumstances,
some expenditure incurred outside Australia by Australian residents is recognised
as qualifying Australian production expenditure (QAPE) for the Producer Offset.[29]
The measure intends to restore the original policy intent of
the Producer Offset which the budget papers say was to support the payment of
Australian cast, crew and business during offshore filming. Therefore, the
Gallipoli clause will be amended to specify that it only applies ‘to expenditure
on payments for Australians’.[30]
Legislation will be required to amend the Income Tax
Assessment Act 1997 in relation to the rules governing the Producer
Offset.
[1].
Funding cuts occurred, for example, in the 2014–15 Budget. That Budget
anticipated savings of $87.1 million over four years by reducing uncommitted
funding to arts programs administered by the Attorney-General's Department
($33.8 million), the Australia Council ($28.2 million) and Screen Australia
($25.1 million). Australian Government, Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2014–15, 2014.
[2].
S Cannane and G Deavin, ‘Budget
2015: Changes to arts funding disastrous, says former chair of Australia
Council’, ABC news online, 15 May 2015.
[3].
Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Impact
of the 2014 and 2015 Commonwealth Budget decisions on the Arts, The
Senate, Canberra, December 2015.
[4].
M Fifield (Minister for Communications and the Arts), Guidelines
released for new arts fund, media release, 20 November 2015.
[5].
Ibid.
[6].
M Fifield (Minister for Communications and the Arts), New
portfolio arrangements for the Arts, media release, 18 March 2017.
[7].
Ibid.
[8].
Ibid.
[9].
Ibid.
[10].
Australia Council, Annual
report 2015–16, Australia Council, Sydney, 2016, p. 17.
[11].
Australian Government, Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2017–18, 2017, p. 72.
[12].
Australian Government, Portfolio
budget statements 2017–18: budget related paper no. 1.3: Communications and
Arts Portfolio, p. 50.
[13].
Fifield, New portfolio arrangements for the Arts, op. cit.
[14].
Australia Council, Australia
Council welcomes funding return, media release, 18 March 2017.
[15].
J Caust, ‘After
the Catalyst arts funding mess, many questions remain’, The Conversation,
21 March 2017.
[16].
Ibid.
[17].
Ibid.
[18].
Live Performance Australia (LPA), Curtains
close on Catalyst but Budget fails to deliver encore performance, media
release, 9 May 2017.
[19].
L Carter, ‘Jobs,
careers on the line as 'Black Friday' cuts hit arts sector’, ABC news
online, 14 May 2016. The online journal Daily Review also notes the effects of
the Australia Council cuts in funding to small arts companies—K Sood, ‘One
year after OzCo bloodbath, how are arts groups surviving?’, Daily Review, 11 May 2017.
[20].
LPA, Curtains close, op. cit.
[21].
Australian Government, Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2017–18, 2017, p. 76.
[22].
M Fifield (Minister for Communications and the Arts), Additional
support for our national collecting institutions, media release,
9 May 2017.
[23].
S Morrison (Treasurer) and M Cormann (Minister for Finance), Mid-year
economic and fiscal outlook 2016-17, p. 140
[24].
Ibid.
[25].
Ibid.
[26].
J Caust, ‘Have
the arts come out of the cold or is it another sleight of hand?’, The
Conversation, 10 May 2017.
[27].
Australian Government, Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2017–18, 2017, p. 73.
[28].
The Gallipoli clause is so-called because it refers to the example given
in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Producer Offset legislation where it is
acknowledged that a film about Gallipoli may need to shoot on location in
Turkey.
[29].
Screen Australia, At
a glance: a quick reference to the Producer Offset, Screen Australia, 1
July 2016.
[30].
Australian Government, Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2017–18, 2017, p. 73.
All online articles accessed May 2017.
For copyright reasons some linked items are only available to members of Parliament.
© Commonwealth of Australia
Creative Commons
With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, and to the extent that copyright subsists in a third party, this publication, its logo and front page design are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia licence.
In essence, you are free to copy and communicate this work in its current form for all non-commercial purposes, as long as you attribute the work to the author and abide by the other licence terms. The work cannot be adapted or modified in any way. Content from this publication should be attributed in the following way: Author(s), Title of publication, Series Name and No, Publisher, Date.
To the extent that copyright subsists in third party quotes it remains with the original owner and permission may be required to reuse the material.
Inquiries regarding the licence and any use of the publication are welcome to webmanager@aph.gov.au.
This work has been prepared to support the work of the Australian Parliament using information available at the time of production. The views expressed do not reflect an official position of the Parliamentary Library, nor do they constitute professional legal opinion.
Any concerns or complaints should be directed to the Parliamentary Librarian. Parliamentary Library staff are available to discuss the contents of publications with Senators and Members and their staff. To access this service, clients may contact the author or the Library‘s Central Enquiry Point for referral.