Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I do. On 24 September, the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts issued a media release entitled 'Record $10 billion in government support for the creative sector'. In that release the minister claimed that I, along with the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, was 'dead wrong' when I accused him of massively overstating his government support for the arts sector during the early part of the pandemic, in October 2020. Mr Speaker, you will not be surprised to hear that, in his scramble to justify the claim of $10 billion in support for the arts, it is in fact the minister who is dead wrong.

The minister claims analysis published by the Bureau of Communications, Arts and Regional Research backs him up, but, if you look at the research he provided, the $10 billion figure that he says was for the arts includes the following occupations: clothing retailing, footwear retailing, watch and jewellery retailing, architectural services, advertising services, and zoological and botanical gardens operations. These workers would be surprised to learn that they had the attention of the arts minister. It would be good if arts workers received his attention at some point.

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