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

I beg your pardon, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has stated previously that there would be no staffing implications or disadvantage in transitioning to the new amalgamated Screen Australia. In fact, there is a loss of 28 jobs. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts has also presided over the slashing of Chamber Music Australia’s funding. There has been the defunding of CrocFest, which was one of the major ways in which young Indigenous students saw, some of them for the first time, Indigenous and non-Indigenous performing artists of world standing. The list goes on and on. We have had the Regional Arts Fund slashed by $11.7 million over four years. That is such a drop in funding that they now doubt that they can in fact get in those buses, fuel up—given the cost of fuel—and travel across the nation and deliver a real experience of the great cultural variety, performances and visual experiences that city people get and can quite readily access, because they can jump on a tram, bus or train. With the regional arts fund slashed we ask: what about social inclusion? What about an experience for people in areas where they must drive for perhaps four hours to a local concert and for people who do not have the means to pay $120 or $130 for a ticket to go to the opera? Regional arts funds have been slashed. I think that is an extraordinarily cynical and uncaring move, especially given the terrible times a lot of eastern Australia is still experiencing with drought.

Then there is the resale royalty scheme. This has long been on Labor’s agenda. It is one of their policy commitments, so we were not surprised to see it in the budget. What we were surprised about is that there is only $1.5 million over four years to implement the resale royalty scheme. How on earth can that amount of funding allow you to set up an administrative regime and the communication, information and education program that is necessary so that artists, gallery owners, wholesalers, retailers and the private sector understand what this scheme is all about? How is it going to ensure that Indigenous artists make their last wills and testaments so that the resale royalty scheme for art can be real when it comes to Indigenous artists? The coalition, of course, actually funded the writing of wills and sent people out into the communities, the remote Aboriginal settlements, to help them write their wills. There is no money for continuing that work in this Rudd budget.

I have to say that this is deeply disappointing for those who expected much more, because they had believed the hype. They believed the slogans. They understood that the minister for arts—who is himself an artist, a singer of renown and a performer—would be more sensitive or perhaps more persuasive when it came to continuing the extraordinarily high level of funding that the coalition had delivered to the arts. What they have had is a real slap in the face and I feel very sorry about that. I have to say that the broken election commitments do stack up. The National Institute of the Humanities was not funded. There is no funding for the theatre and dance strategy of the Australian Council for the Arts, and the ArtStart program for artists’ welfare was not funded.

There is a lot of explaining to do, so it is no wonder that the minister for arts is missing in action when it comes to engaging the arts community. He is invited, he is begged to come and talk about the impacts of these program cuts. He is asked politely if he would like to come and see some of the performances so he can value the different forms of artistic endeavour from both our young Australians and those who are now of world, professional standard. But, just as he is on the environment, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts is missing in action. He is probably best portrayed as the silent minister.

When it comes to Indigenous affairs in terms of the performing arts and Indigenous artists, the coalition was most keen and was in the process of ensuring that there was a code of conduct in regard to the treatment of Australian Indigenous artists. There were programs developed to ensure the authenticity of works and to help with their copyright protection, particularly from potential domestic and international copyright breaches. None of that work has been funded for continuation and, again, I say that that is a huge disappointment. I, along with the shadow minister for family and community services, have been charged with keeping a close eye on Indigenous affairs and I am very pleased and honoured to have this role of ensuring that Australia’s Indigenous peoples have a fair go and that we do close the gap in life expectancy, education, training, and employment. I often see ongoing discrimination when it comes to someone giving an Indigenous person a fair go as they step through the door and look for a job.

As you know, we responded to the Little children are sacred report some six months before the last election, when that report was delivered in the Northern Territory. We set in place one of the best funded and most ambitious rescue programs ever for a set of communities in the Northern Territory which were in such a state that I think most Australian were in such a state that I thinks it shocked and dismayed most Australians. The coalition said that we would stop pornography and we would change the permit system, which excluded grey nomads, journalists and travelling non-Indigenous Australians from visiting those places, going into the local art gallery and visiting the community store. We said we would change the permit system so the places you would normally expect to visit in an Australian country town were also accessible to you as a drive-through visitor. Of course, no sacred places, no private homes and nothing off the actual public place register could be visited.

This business of the permit system was shamelessly attacked during the election campaign as an attempt by the coalition to have blow-ins go to sacred places and so on. We have seen the permit system watered down and once again we will have apartheid in the Northern Territory—where Australians who wish to travel, may not, where again it will be out of sight and out of mind for the most impoverished, and where the most unacceptable housing and infrastructure will go unseen and perhaps again be neglected, because this new Rudd government has chosen to reinstate the permit system as it was before.

The Labor government has also said pornography is okay as long as it is only up to 30 per cent of content on pay TV. We say no, that is not at all what the Indigenous community wants and has said to us; we are appalled by this change. We are also very concerned that there is now going to be an allowable condition where you can drive pornography or indeed alcohol through those settlements and there is not an offence committed if you do that. I am concerned that, while we have had ongoing funding for the emergency response, it is $20 million less and there is a relaxing of the pornography and alcohol bans and a reinstating of the permit system.

But perhaps I am most concerned about the employment prospects for Indigenous Australians right across the country, particularly in those emergency communities. There was a program running there—CDEP—which only helped about 20 per cent of the unemployed population in those settlements. They were the lucky ones—the men mostly—who had a little bit of work in return for welfare. We said that that was not good enough and meant generations of people would be sitting down in the dirt and doing nothing. It sapped their sense of independence and self-esteem. It has emasculated the men and driven the women to despair. I am very disappointed to see that the CDEP program is not going to be abolished and replaced with real job seeker support and employment prospects. I ask that the Labor government rethink that shortsighted and disadvantaging policy that they seem hell-bent on. (Time expired)

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