James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

TEVENS () (): It is an exciting evening here in the House of Representatives as we debate a bill to change the name of a government agency, the Creative Australia Bill 2023. It's not the first time that we've done this. I think the last one was Jobs and Skills Australia. That was equally thrilling, to spend the time of the House of Representatives debating legislation that effectively changes the name of a government department. It's a busy government that can be focused on such important things as converting the name of an agency from the Australia Council to Creative Australia!

That is radical, but, for those that are frightened about the pace of change here, don't worry, because the board is helpfully not changing its name. The agency will become Creative Australia, but, so that we don't move too quickly and frighten people, the new board of Creative Australia will still be called the Australia Council Board. That is a great relief. For a moment there, I was worried about whether or not the great bureaucracy, the arts department of government, was going to be able to handle such a revolution. But the government have helpfully not gone too far and are only changing the agency's name, not the name of the board that oversees that agency.

We're not standing in the way of this historic moment, one that I will talk to my grandchildren about: 'I was here when we did it.' I won't be able to explain the full significance of the moment, but I'll do my best as I reflect on it for many decades to come as being one of the great things we did in my time here in the House of Representatives.

This, of course, was an attempt for the then opposition to say they had an arts policy a couple of days before the last election. The now minister gave a speech, I can't remember where, saying that they were going to bring back Creative Australia. That was probably when someone said, 'We'd better have an arts policy before election day, because there will be people in the arts community that say, "What's the Labor Party's arts policy?"' So the Labor Party announced they were going to establish Creative Australia—which, it turns out, is just changing the name of an existing department to 'Creative Australia', hence the legislation we're debating now.

For good measure, passing this legislation does mean that the existing board that won't be changing its name, the Australia Council Board, will be recreated, which is an opportunity to reappoint the existing board or consider appointing new members to a new board that will be larger than the current board. It will be very interesting to see those appointments made if indeed this legislation passes, as I expect it will, through this chamber and the Senate. That will be an opportunity for us to see whether or not there are any other motivations in this dramatic name-change-of-an-agency bill that indeed gives an opportunity for certain people to be appointed to this new board—a larger board, too, I might mention. There will be 14 people able to be rewarded by being appointed to a new board with the same name as the old board.

We will watch very intently as to who the government appoints to that board. That might give us a window into one of the reasons why it's necessary to dedicate the time of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia, the 13th-largest economy on the planet, to debating legislation to change the name of an agency and wipe the appointment of existing board members so that new ones, in a larger number, can be given some kind of reward from a new government, perhaps.

Nonetheless, I take the opportunity to talk about my own electorate when it comes to the opportunities that this new agency, Creative Australia, will provide. Particularly, I have the South Australian Film Corporation, located in my electorate of Sturt. I'm sure everyone has seen many films that were either filmed there or in some way had production associated with that facility in Glenside. Certainly in my time as the member I've had the opportunity to very regularly go there and see not only the great work that they're doing at the Film Corporation but also the great ecosystem that is there for the many different creative agencies across all the different disciplines of film and content creation. I look forward to Creative Australia being as effective as the Australia Council for the Arts had been in supporting the sector.

Of course, I also pay tribute to Screen Australia, who have had a lot to do, at the Commonwealth level, with supporting production there. Obviously rebates et cetera that have been in place over many years have also helped with attracting production and postproduction, which is a sector in film, screen and content that people shouldn't underestimate. It's very significant. There are some great companies in my electorate and in Adelaide more generally that are working on projects across the world, and particularly in Hollywood. Adelaide is very lucky from a time zone point of view. You can effectively have a business operating in Los Angeles, a business operating in Adelaide and a business operating in London, and they effectively, helpfully, overlap time zones. You can basically collaborate 24 hours a day across those three time zones. With cloud computing and all those great elements of modern technology, some of the most sophisticated elements of special effects can be worked on through the day in Adelaide and then handed over to a team that night in London that hands it over to Los Angeles and then back again to Adelaide. I've had the opportunity to engage with businesses that do exactly that in my electorate. They're very impressive and are working not only on very significant Hollywood productions but also, most importantly, on productions that are happening domestically right there at the film studio in Glenside. That is one sector, when we talk about the creative arts, that I'm very passionate about.

From a community level right up to an elite level across all the various elements of art and artistic expression, like any local member, I've got a wide variety in my electorate. It is very important that, at the Commonwealth level, we are providing appropriate support to give those various sectors the best chance to achieve their full potential. That's one of the fundamental differences between us and the government: we do like to see a focus of taxpayer funds going to the coalface of these sectors and not being consumed within bureaucracies. This legislation adds complexity to bureaucracy. They're not just getting a new logo, a new creativeaustralia.gov.au and whatever else they'll be spending on the rebrand. There are some other levels of bureaucracy being created, with additional boards and this and that that'll be consuming the funding that goes into this portfolio.

Of course, every dollar going towards that is a dollar that can't be given directly to frontline support towards artists and those involved in the vast variety of creative industries, who I would think would much prefer whatever investment is being made at a federal level going directly to them rather than being soaked up by unnecessary bureaucracy. I commend the contribution of our lead speaker to the extent that we do differentiate ourselves from the government, in that we like to see taxpayer funds going directly to the people it's designed for and not used up in additional, unnecessary bureaucracy.

Nonetheless, we're not standing in the way of this bill. I think we've outlined that maybe this is not the most significant way in which we could be assisting this sector or spending the time of the House of Representatives, but, if this is the big priority of the government when it comes to supporting those in the creative industries, we will not stand in their way. We will let this great, totemic piece of legislation pass and watch the unbelievable dividend, the return from it, echo and reverberate across the creative industries throughout my electorate and across the nation. I conclude my contribution on this bill to the House.

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