Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, it is a very significant facility. It was established in 1984 to provide for the preservation and accessibility of the nation’s audiovisual heritage. Independence and autonomy are not ends in themselves, but a means to an end. In fact, the existence of an effective and sustainable guardian for the national audiovisual memory is essential, but it too must be adequately funded. Again, I have to stress that this new government, the Kevin Rudd government, has seen fit to slash arts funding. With the new two per cent efficiency dividend, not to mention the other razor gang slashes already mentioned, we are living in quite some trepidation about how the National Film and Sound Archive will continue the excellent work it has been doing with its significantly diminished Australian government support.

I need to remind the minister who is in the committee room today that UNESCO has outlined very special requirements for audiovisual heritage. It sets out minimum standards of autonomy to support organisations in their mission and it does not shy away from the fact that this costs money. UNESCO defines an audiovisual archive as follows:

An audiovisual archive is an organization or department of an organization which has a statutory or other mandate for providing access to a collection of audiovisual documents and the audiovisual heritage by collecting, managing, preserving and promoting.

All of this of course requires adequate funding. The archivist’s mission is defined by the Australian Society of Archivists as follows:

Archivists ensure that records which have value as authentic evidence of administrative, corporate, cultural and intellectual activity are made, kept and used. The work of archivists is vital for ensuring organisational efficiency and accountability and for supporting understandings of Australian life through the management and retention of its personal, corporate and social memory.

The audiovisual heritage includes documents, objects, artefacts and technology, the latter giving AV archives a strong museological aspect. The International Council of Museums, or ICOM, defines a museum as:

… a non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment.

That is what we hope will be the fulfilled destiny of our stand-alone National Film and Sound Archive for Australia. You heard my emphasis on the non-profit-making aspect of such an institution and therefore, unfortunately, it is dependent on public funding. Again I have to stress that this minister, in his first 100 days in office, has presided over the slashing of funding to such institutions, and this is of very real concern to the opposition, who when in government made sure that there was in fact an increase in arts funding in recognition of the significance of such a sector in our society for supporting the cultural development and wellbeing of all Australian people.

The definitions I have just mentioned demonstrate the philosophical and professional lineage of the NFSA within the field of memory institutions—the libraries, archives and museums which collectively maintain access to the nation’s memory. Let me tell you how little consideration those institutions have, sadly, been given in the first 100 days of the Labor government. I mentioned the museums and archives. Unfortunately, funding for the National Maritime Museum, which is in fact based in Sydney, has been slashed by $1½ million over the next four years—these are the arts cuts already announced. Funding for the National Library of Australia has been slashed by $3,000,800. Funding for the National Museum has been slashed by $2,000,600. Funding for the Australia Council itself has been slashed by $4,000,400.

These are major, iconic Australian institutions which cannot continue to collect or acquire our ongoing cultural materials and artefacts, given their treatment by this Labor government in its first 100 days. We just have to hope the penny drops soon and the first 100 days will lead to backflips, as they have with things such as carer benefits—and, it would seem now, with something as simple as a horse levy, the $100 equine flu levy, where a backflip is in the wind. Let us hope that backflips on the slashing of Australian arts funding come through soon. I see the minister nodding; I am pleased that he understands the importance and significance of those slashes to funding.

The National Film and Sound Archive Bill will create a stand-alone statutory authority with, as I said, the responsibility for collecting and maintaining Australia’s film collection for the enjoyment of future generations. The Australian National Film and Sound Archive is already internationally renowned; in fact, it has The Kelly Gang, which has recently been acknowledged as the world’s oldest feature film, made in 1906-07. The significance of our Film and Sound Archive is recognised globally, and long may we be able to retain its excellence. As I said, though, it will require a different attitude from this government as to its resourcing.

There is another significant issue that I hope the minister will turn his attention to when it comes to the film archive—it is very closely related—and that is statutory deposit arrangements. We do not know what this government is going to do about statutory deposit arrangements. This, for the minister’s edification, is all about where or how statutory deposits of film may be made. Perhaps there will be a selective statutory deposit scheme where the film archive is notified of what new film material is made and then choose what it wishes to have donated for collection for all time, or maybe the minister is thinking about a compulsory statutory deposit, something like the National Library system. Of course, film material is much more plentiful than published material, so these considerations have to be actively contemplated right now. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the minister is even aware of this issue or of how he might be dealing with it as we establish this independent archive authority. Let us hope that, as a result of my reminding him today, he will turn his mind to the statutory deposit issue. It is certainly exercising the minds of archivists as we speak.

The third bill is just a consequential and transitional provisions bill to ensure that the agencies in the first and second bills—Screen Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive—can be established through a set of reasonable transitional arrangements. I repeat that, since our government introduced these initiatives in September last year, we support these bills. They are, of course, not unfamiliar to us.

Let me go on to talk about what is unfamiliar to us, and that is the incredible crashing and burning of arts funding in this country in the last 100 days. I am spending a lot of time talking to the arts community now, and I am quite shocked at the reductions in important programs that they are having to make. In considering their younger performer programs, they are quite aware that there will quite probably be an intergenerational gap in excellence in performer training in this country given the way the funds are being cut. They cannot continue as they were before with major support for young performers in this country. Let me go through for you, item by item, what has occurred in these first 100 days of Minister Garrett being responsible for the area of arts and perhaps being a victim of the Rudd Labor government’s razor gang. I cannot imagine he went along willingly with their decisions. What did we do in the coalition government years? What did we commit to? What did we achieve, and what has happened in these first 100 days of the Rudd government?

First of all, we were committed to developing a rich and stimulating cultural sector accessible to everyone in the Australian community. Let me stress ‘everybody’. I am the member for Murray, a rural and regional community, and we do not see much of the opera or the ballet, but we have certainly had a lot of touring companies like Bell Shakespeare, the Flying Fruit Fly Circus and so on. They really add to the cultural life and the sense of inclusion of our rural and regional community. The first thing that the arts institutions have decided is that with the slash in funding—the two per cent efficiency dividend, for example, which has been required of them—they will stop their touring programs. Australia is a huge country; the tyranny of distance is always a major contributor to whether or not we move programs across from, say, Sydney to Perth. Of course touring is the first thing to go if you have to cut performances. That is a great tragedy for this nation, particularly for rural and regional Australians, who are doing it so tough with drought or with flood. I see nodding opposite, so I am pleased that they understand.

We also assisted Australian artists to create distinctive and Australian cultural works that enrich our culture, national identity and reputation for international excellence. We helped the Australian film and television industry to forge new pathways to investment and to capitalise on opportunities for international partnerships. It has always been Liberal governments that have built on the capacity of Australians to perform and to produce new works. It began for the Australian film industry in the days of the Gorton government, followed up by the Fraser government, who introduced the 10BA tax measures which stimulated the great Australian film industry resurgence.

In helping the film and television industries to forge new pathways, the Howard government understood cultural diplomacy. We established the Australia on the World Stage program, which was funded to the tune of some $20 million over four years. The program gave emerging artists, new companies, smaller companies and even larger companies the opportunity to tour overseas to develop international partnerships and their international reputations. I have to say that one of the very first cutbacks by the razor gang was to slash Australia on the World Stage. It is gone, so Australian performers, dance companies, poets, musicians and visual artists will no longer be able to have federal government support to move into the international arena to show their excellence. As I mentioned before, Australia is an expensive place to move from. It is not like slipping across the border in Europe. Without that funding, Australia’s new, emerging and established artists will be less able to gain recognition and less able to enhance the reputation of Australian performing arts offshore. I think that is a great tragedy. I ask Minister Garrett to review that particular funding slash. Perhaps it was the razor gang not understanding the importance of cultural life in this country. I ask that he revisit cutting the funding to that particular program—and others I will refer to—because it was a cruel blow.

The coalition also worked with our Indigenous artists to identify ways of protecting the value of their unique expertise and works of art. We were particularly concerned that a lot of our Australian Indigenous artists did and still do depend on CDEP—the Community Development Employment Projects program—funding, particularly in Northern Australia. You could say that Indigenous artists have been exploited over several generations, having been paid an allowance equivalent to Work for the Dole rather than being commercially rewarded for the value of their work. And it is not just the artists but those who support the artists—those who live in the communities, those who help market their art and those who work in the art galleries—particularly in smaller places like Katherine, Finke River and Haastes Bluff.

The coalition government understood only too well the potential for exploitation, and, in fact, the real exploitation, of a lot of Indigenous artists. We were in the process of transferring people in the arts sector—people in the emergency response areas of the Northern Territory, in the first instance—to real, paid jobs. We already had the first of these people on salaries, particularly in places like Finke River. I have to say that I was hugely disappointed to hear that one of the first moves of the new Rudd government was to announce that our transitioning of people off CDEP—work for the dole for Aboriginal people—into real jobs was to be halted and that there would be a review in some six or eight months about the whole business of CDEP funding. In the meantime, our transition to real work programs has been halted and therefore those art communities are back where they were, depending on welfare subsidies. I am talking about some of the most significant artists in Australian society today. I think that is shameful, quite frankly. I think it was one of the short-sighted moves in response to pressures during the election campaign. The Labor candidate, the member for Lingiari, went about talking to those who were profiting from the status quo of CDEP—and they were a tiny minority, those who were able to gain more income from top-ups and so on. The candidate helped secure his re-election by promising that CDEP would be retained. CDEP was sit-down money. It excluded some 80 per cent of the local population who had no jobs and most of those on CDEP, mostly men, had no real work to do. It was a huge disappointment. Again I say to the minister: please re-examine what we were doing to support Indigenous people in the arts sector to be properly reimbursed for their artwork and to be genuinely upskilled, trained and initiated into the mysteries of art marketing and resale.

I put another issue to the minister, and that is the royalty resale scheme, which I understand the Labor government committed to as part of its election commitments. I have heard nothing from the minister in the first three months about the royalty resale scheme. It is a complex issue and, for Indigenous artists in particular, as he would acknowledge, a matter of huge import as their artwork passes from one owner to another, going from several hundred dollars reimbursement, say, out at Finke River to hundreds of thousands of dollars perhaps on resale in the international market. I ask the minister to address the royalty resale scheme urgently, because it is a matter that is of very live and real interest, particularly to Indigenous artists.

I want to talk about building upon the success of our world-class training institutions. The coalition put a lot of resources and effort into our training institutions to provide Australia with our next generation of artists and performers. We encouraged understanding, knowledge, participation and appreciation of Australian culture across Australia and the world. We did this through funding programs, not by writing press releases, giving interviews or making feelgood statements. We actually put resources behind our ideals and our values.

Let me go back to the business of younger people. I mentioned that our coalition government was very concerned about ensuring generations of young musicians and others develop their talents. The Young and Emerging Artists Fund was a coalition initiative which was commenced in 1996. It is in limbo, I am sorry to tell you. The Young and Emerging Artists Fund provided funds for fellowships, cadetships and so on for rural and regional artists, as well as metropolitan artists. As we speak, there is no advertising of those positions and there are no calls for expressions of interest, because bodies like NIDA, the Australian Youth Orchestra and so on have no idea what Labor is going to do about this emerging artists fund. They have had no instructions and no information. They do not know whether it is like the other axed programs: simply gone. Or is the minister contemplating something even more generous than that which the coalition put into the system? The young artists and performers want to know. They have to know. Our young and emerging artists deserve better than what they are getting right now from the Rudd government.

The coalition provided record levels of financial support, totalling $680 million in our 2007-08 budget. That represented an increase of $40 million since the previous year, and an increase of more than 65 per cent since Labor was in office last, in 1996. As I have said repeatedly, Mr Garrett has presided over a slash of over $40 million in his first 100 days. Sadly, we are told there is more to come, with the depreciation issue being revisited and the two per cent dividend on the table that the agencies must deal with.

The coalition introduced a $282.9 million film package, which was to bring more international film productions to Australia, encourage greater investment in the Australian film industry and strengthen our film production and acting skills base. All we have got so far from Labor is the legislation before the House today, the Screen Australia Bill, but no funding attached to it and heaven knows what might be attached in the future to anything they might call a film package. We committed almost $420 million over three years from 2007-08 for the Australia Council—an increase of $20 million over the previous three years. Labor has already slashed the Australia Council funding by $4.5 million. That has been announced and is already being dealt with by the Australia Council, which is an umbrella funding body for the other institutions.

We committed over $30 million over four years from 2006-07 to make Old Parliament House the premier institution interpreting Australia’s political history. Canberra citizens are still reeling from the shock of the slashes to the National Capital Authority, which is making the icon institutions in the Australian Capital Territory look very much like the poor relations, given that many of them are still young and building up their collections.

We committed $26.5 million for the National Archives of Australia over four years for the new purpose-built preservation and record storage facility. As we say, the Labor government has no such commitment. All it is doing is enacting our legislation. There was a commitment for $10.6 million over four years, from 2006-07, to improve the governance, finances and artistic standards of the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, and Orchestra Victoria. Mr Garrett is silent on that issue too.

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