Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to ask about some of the arts elements in the budget. Unfortunately there was not a lot a lot of mention of the arts, but we have questions. We have seen the actual amounts to be returned to the Australia Council in this year's budget and across the forward estimates from the closure of Catalystand the transfers of the Major Festivals Initiative and the Australian World Orchestra. From those figures can you update the amount of uncommitted funding—in total and over each of the four years from 2017-18, year by year—available to the Australia Council to support the really important small-to-medium arts sector? Has the final round of Catalyst been completed? If not, when will that occur, when will announcements be made and how much of those uncommitted funds over the forward estimates have been or will be expended on the final round of Catalyst?

I also want to ask about national institutions. Members will have seen reports this week that, despite small amounts of capital funding for national institutions, there are collections at risk from prolonged cuts. CPSU researchers have looked into this. Years of budget cuts have heaped pressure on staff and limited public access to collections. The report in The Canberra Times shows that they have made it harder to acquire and preserve items, slowed the efforts to digitalise historical documents, and put artefacts at risk of deteriorating. Can the minister explain why he has neglected the national institutions and, as reported in The Canberra Times, ripped out $30 million from museums, galleries and libraries since 2013?

I would also like to refer the minister to the expenses under the arts and cultural heritage subfunction, which are estimated to decrease by 2.6 per cent in real terms from 2016-17 to 2017-18 and by 12 per cent in real terms over the period 2017-18 to 2020-21. This subfunction includes programs that support funding for the arts and cultural institutions. The estimated decreases reflect the implementation of efficiencies and arts related savings measures from the 2014-15 budget, the 2015-16 budget and the 2015-16 MYEFO. So with cuts of this nature affecting the long-term sustainability of the arts sector, what is the minister's overall vision for the arts, and how is he planning to remedy this double-digit cut in arts support that has been engineered entirely by this government?

They are the questions that I would like to ask on the arts, and, if time allows, I would like to turn to questions on the NBN specific to my electorate. The budget claims high-speed broadband in regional areas is a key priority. But in my electorate of Macquarie, we have been condemned to complete chaos on NBN delivery with a mishmash of fibre to the premises—put in under Labor—satellite, wireless, fibre to the node and fibre to the curb. How is this budget fair when residents in the lower Blue Mountains suburbs like Glenbrook, Blaxland and Springwood and in parts of the Hawkesbury like Wilberforce are entitled to fibre to the curb, while residents in the upper Blue Mountains at Blackheath, Katoomba and in the Hawkesbury's Mcgraths Hill and Freemans Reach are relegated to outdated copper from the node to homes? How is it fair that Grose Vale has some homes that will have FTTC, some that will have FTTN, and others that are due to have fixed wireless? How is it fair that Pitt Town has some residents that have fibre to the premises, some that will get fibre to the node eventually, and others that will have fixed wireless? Where is the fair nationwide approach when there will be fixed wireless in Maraylya but satellite in Colo Heights?

In many parts of my electorate, when the power goes off and the fibre to the node NBN goes down, there is no mobile phone communication. People have no way of communicating during an emergency and this is creating great fear amongst many in the community. What is in this budget to ensure that, in a bushfire-prone area like mine, people will be able to reliably access mobile communication when the power goes off? And what is in this budget to address a whole bunch of issues that have come up in the upper Blue Mountains? Community radio station Radio Blue Mountains in Katoomba has been trying to get fibre to the premises. They have been quoted nearly $150,000 by NBN, and they are in the CBD of Katoomba. Speeds are not matching the promise. What steps are the government taking to reduce the coexistence issues while ADSL and NBN are both using a single copper line? We have properties that are missing out at the moment because of long length of copper. What are you doing to fix that? (Time expired)

See this speech in context