Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to discuss the Australia Council Amendment (Creative Australia) Bill 2023. Before I start on the detail of this bill, I do need to celebrate and congratulate two members of the electorate of Casey, which is rich with creative talent. Josh and Anya are in the top eight of the Australian Idol finals. To have two residents from Casey in the top eight of the whole nation is something we're really proud of. They're great young people. Josh is a local singer and songwriter, who grew up on a rose farm in Mount Evelyn, while Anya is a Selby local, growing up playing gigs in the hills at the Sooki Lounge in Belgrave. They're both brilliant in different ways, and I'm voting for both of them, and I encourage everyone out there to vote for both of them as well.

I had the chance last Friday to speak to both Josh and Anya, and it was amazing. You could just hear in their voices the passion that they've got for music and the arts. They're essentially, as they said, 'living the dream', and it's wonderful to see to two young Australians living their dream. That's what creative arts is about. It's about many things, but it is about allowing young people and those who have been in the industry for a long time to do something that they've got a deep passion and love for. I look forward to watching the rest of their journey.

I will move on, after congratulating Josh and Anya, to the bill that rebrands the Australia Council as Creative Australia as a result of the government's decision to transfer the functions of Creative Partnerships Australia to the Australia Council. Creative Partnerships Australia was established 10 years ago with the aim of attracting more philanthropic funding for the arts, and it has operated successfully ever since, yet the first thing Tony Burke did when he came into government was to abolish the agency. This bill is being promoted as implementing the government's national cultural policy, but in reality it doesn't do very much. Labor promised its national cultural policy would transform our arts sector, yet its policy is long on rhetoric and rather thin on specifics, and they fail to back it with serious funding support.

Labor released its national cultural policy, Revive, in January. It's a five-year plan for the arts and provides $286 million in additional funding to the arts over four years. However, according to media reports, at least $45 million of this comes from cancelling the former coalition government's Temporary Interruption Fund, meaning total new money is around $240 million, or $60 million a year at best, and much of the document is simply a reannouncement of what we knew was already happening. This bill follows the very standard Labor formula of having a very impressive sounding name while actually delivering very little. I'm a little concerned, to be honest, about the creation of the so-called Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces. It shows Mr Burke is keen to use the arts sector as a showcase for his wider agenda of increasing union power and entrenching restrictions on our economy.

The contrast with funding committed for the arts by former Liberal-National governments is stark. New funding commitments during our 2019-2022 term totalled $1.1 billion. Our Liberal-National government delivered record arts funding of over $1 billion, as I said. No other government, Labor or Liberal, has matched this level of funding for the arts, and that remains the case even after the announcement of Labor's new national cultural policy. This funding from the former government included programs like the RISE Fund, which supported arts companies, promoters, festivals and entrepreneurs to put no-shows on as the sector sought to rebuild from the challenges of COVID. I know there were many in the industry in Casey who benefited from this program. RISE funded more than 541 projects, 50 per cent of which were in rural and regional Australia, and created more than 213,000 job opportunities across Australia for experiences reaching more than 55 million Australians.

One thing I have noted about Labor's national cultural policy is that it contains no new funding for our national collecting institutions. Funding decisions to support these institutions have evidently been kicked down the road to the May budget. There have been a series of media reports about the funding needs of our collecting institutes, including the National Library of Australia's public digital service, Trove. I've had many residents in Casey write to me concerned about the funding for Trove, and I look forward to and will watch with interest any future announcements by the government on this. Again, the coalition has a proud record of investing in these institutions, including a funding boost of $5.7 million over two years to support and enhance the continuing operation of Trove through to 30 June 2023.

The policy also contains no new funding for our national performing arts organisations. These organisations are experiencing a change in behaviour, with audiences not purchasing tickets until the last minute, making it harder to return to financial stability. It was the coalition who invested over $50 million in these organisations through the Arts Sustainability Fund, which prevented many from closing their doors. It was the coalition who created a $50 million Temporary Interruption Fund to provide certainty for screen producers. It was the coalition who invested more than $370 million for Australian local content through the Australian Children's Television Foundation; Screen Australia; the production offset; the post, digital and visual effects offset; and the Temporary Interruption Fund. It was the coalition who raised the producer offset for television content from 20 per cent to 30 per cent so Australian producers received a greater rebate, making producing film and television content in Australia more attractive and affordable. It was the coalition who invested more than $47 million to digitise and preserve collection material held by the National Film and Sound Archive and seven other national collecting institutions and to maintain the National Library of Australia's Trove website. As I said, it's so important that we maintain this funding.

We understood during COVID and understand now how important the arts industry and culture are to the very essence of social community and the wellbeing of human beings. Our COVID-19 Creative Economy Support Package of nine measures across 2022 and 2021 provided over $500 million worth of investment, including the $220 million for the RISE—Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand—Fund and $21.4 million for regional arts, including $11.4 million to support arts and cultural development tourism experiences. We also provided $12 million to support Indigenous art centres and Indigenous art fairs in regional and remote Australia, delivered in full through the Indigenous Visual Arts Industry Support program. We invested $540 million over the seven years to 2026-2027 through the location incentive, to attract domestic and international film and television productions to Australia. All of this was on top of the recurrent funding provided to the Australia Council, which stands at around $220 million a year; $260 million for our national collecting institutions; and over $80 million for Screen Australia.

In my electorate of Casey, we've a proud, passionate, thriving creative community, nurturing literature, fine arts, crafts and music through many organisations. One such organisation is the Dandenong Ranges Music Council. It's a community music organisation that was established in 1979. Its work focuses on the needs of communities who wish to listen, to learn, to perform and to create music in partnership with paid professional arts workers and artists. Bev McAlister established the council to enable all ages and abilities to participate and enjoy music in all its forms. Although Bev herself is not a musician, she appreciated and recognised the huge benefits music can bring to the community. Bev received her OAM in 1994 and received the Yarra Ranges shire's Mayor's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, both in recognition of her dedication to the Dandenong Ranges Music Council. I had the pleasure of meeting Bev last week and talking to her about this policy. I won't provide her feedback yet because she has to sign it off through the organisation, but what really was clear was her passion for our community and the arts and the inspiration that they provide her and many others in the Dandenongs. The projects that the Dandenong Ranges Music Council brings to the community include workshops and master classes with professional musicians, music lessons on a wide variety of instruments, concerts in which our communities can participate and music therapy sessions and performances for and by people with disabilities.

Community music is used to celebrate, to grieve, even to protest and to heal. It tells community stories of bushfires, of storms and of our cultural history, as well as of the issues of today and those of the future. It definitely played a big part in the Dandenong Ranges in particular, as the residents there recovered from the storms of 2021. The Dandenong Ranges Music Council has nine ensembles at the moment, from orchestral to swing, to strings, and artists with disabilities, and numerous projects on the go at any one time.

They encourage family participation in their projects. In fact, some local musicians had their first musical experiences as children with the DRMC. They've gone on to study and become music professionals and have returned to live in the local community, which keeps our community fresh and vibrant. This cross-generational aspect of what they do is really important.

We have other strong creative institutions. Burrinja is a great example. It's named after Lin Onus, an Indigenous artist who's no longer with us. I was fortunate growing up: my father was a painter and a sculptor, and he was good friends with Lin Onus. Lin lived in Upwey, and I had the pleasure of spending time at Lin's house with his family growing up. So it was a real treat when I went to Burrinja and found out that it's actually named after Lin. It's another example of our local community staying together.

The Ridges and Rivers project, which is being delivered by Yarra Ranges Council, is a $30 million project and investment partnership between the federal government, the state government, the local council and Bendigo Bank, which continues to support creative arts projects in Yarra Ranges and to bring tourism into our area. I had the fortunate opportunity to visit one of the 'lung walks', which is a display by Peter Mcilwain, in ngurrak barring, which is RidgeWalk, which means 'mountain paths'. It was a great example of how, in Casey, we can bring together the creative arts community and the natural environment that we have in the Dandenongs. There are many more great creative arts organisations in Casey. There's a strong music culture, celebrated by Bev, Josh and Anya, who have all helped create that culture we all enjoy. As the son of a musician, painter and sculptor, I look forward to continuing to support the arts sector in Casey.

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