Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for creating this opportunity to talk about the arts, as I am always really proud to talk in this place about the arts and particularly the vibrant and active arts community in the ACT, who I've been proud to advocate for throughout the pandemic. The arts were so critical. The arts are so central to all aspects of Australian life. They tell our stories. They inspire us, and the pandemic really brought this to the fore, as it was to the arts that we looked for comfort and entertainment. But it was also the arts that suffered the most, as people were unable to gather together at live performances or in galleries, and the jobs in those sectors were obviously some of the first to be hit and were the worst hit by the economic impacts of the pandemic.

So, throughout that time, I and others in the then opposition were very proud to stand up and fight for the arts in this place, as they were neglected by the previous government throughout that. For the first hundred days of the pandemic, nothing was said by the previous coalition government about the arts. Arts workers were largely left out of the JobKeeper scheme due to the nature of their employment, and there was no specific support for them for a very long time. It was as if people in the arts were not seen as real workers—as if the jobs of creatives and people in creative industries were not equal to other jobs. We also saw that in the university sector and with casuals, and I could go on. But I will focus today on the arts sector. The then Liberal-National government really were dragged kicking and screaming to support the arts sector during the pandemic at all, while artists desperately needed our help.

I also want to note that it's the arts community who are often the first to step up and support the broader community when disaster hits. The bushfires were a perfect example of that. The arts community made donations and ran performances to raise money for affected communities. But, when they were hit, their government was missing in action.

The then minister Paul Fletcher misled people about how much support was going to the arts sector during the COVID pandemic. He claimed that up to $10 billion in support was going to arts sector workers through the JobKeeper scheme, but included in that were workers in non-arts sectors like clothing and footwear wholesaling and retailing, clothing manufacturing, jewellery wholesaling and retailing sectors—so not really arts at all.

The belated response, establishing the RISE Fund, had no vision and no strategy. The Liberals and Nationals came under fire, as we know, for granting $1.35 million to a Guns N' Roses tour while our Australian performers and artists were really struggling and the neediest parts of the sector were left with nothing. This was heavily criticised by Australian artists and by Labor.

Australia has had two landmark cultural policies and those were both delivered by Labor: Creative Nation, under Paul Keating, and Creative Australia, under Simon Crean. We will honour that legacy by delivering a national cultural policy. The Liberals, in fact, scrapped the last national cultural policy in 2013 and they replaced it with nothing. So we are very proud, now in government again, to have this well underway in our first six months. It will be announced by the end of the year. Minister Tony Burke has been travelling the country talking with artists, creatives and the sector around the development of that policy, and I was really pleased to attend his town hall in Canberra with our arts community—notably at the Gorman Arts Centre, to which federal Labor will contribute $5 million for its much-needed renovations. We are working hard on our commitment to launch the National Cultural Policy and change the trajectory of the sector after this decade of neglect. This will put arts back at the centre of all aspects of life and policy in Australia, where it belongs, and I am very proud to be part of a government that is going to stand up for our arts sector, the jobs involved and the intrinsic importance of arts to Australian life.

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