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

Yes, Gough Whitlam did call it the Australia Council. You would think those opposite would want to honour his legacy, but no. It's important to remember that this is typical of the new Labor government, who love to name existing operations something new, and the reason they need to rename it is that they need to have a media release. If you don't have a media release, what's the point? It's amazing that this government has had five media releases this year about the same announcement: the renaming. They launched the national cultural policy in January this year, 2023, and then they announced Revive, a new national cultural policy—two announcements on the same day about the same thing.

A couple of months later, in March, they're talking about how parliament are voting for Creative Australia. They still haven't delivered anything. There's an announcement that we're having a vote. And then there's another press release about how the government is reviving Australian arts and culture. Two weeks later, it's laying the foundation for Creative Australia. 'If we don't have that name change, we can't have all these press releases.' No doubt the minister will have another one coming out tomorrow or the day after that we've voted again and passed another bit of legislation. 'We haven't really achieved anything in 12 months for the arts community, but we've had a lot of press releases and we've got a lot of good coverage,' so 'job done' for the minister.

I really find it interesting that there are more media releases about the renaming and the restructure of the existing arts body than about the entire Labor small-business policy platform. As someone who spent 15 years in small business, working with them and for them, it's amazing that we get more press releases about the arts—and I love the arts and I'll continue to talk about them. But this is what this government does: press release after press release. Policies that actually deliver for the community are much more important.

As I said, they released their national cultural policy in January and much of the document is simply a re-announcement of what we knew was already happening. Back in March we debated the initial Creative Australia, which has essentially rebranded the Australia Council as Creative Australia. Again, it's a result of this 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. A great thing. Any time that governments, private enterprise and philanthropic organisations can work together is a great way to get value for taxpayer dollars, and it's operated successfully ever since then. Yet the first thing Tony Burke did when he came into government was to abolish the agency.

There are several aspects of these new arrangements that are troubling. The first is that we have seen a re-weighting of spending towards having more Commonwealth arts officials, and that's at the expense of real frontline arts activities in all of our communities. According to the budget, the average staff level for the Australia Council will increase by 32 per cent, from an estimated 108 in 2022-23 to 143 in 2023-24. Let's be clear, that 108 to 143 increase, every dollar in those salaries, is a dollar that could have been spent in our communities, in the community of Casey, at an amazing organisation like Burrinja, to deliver arts performances to support artists.

We hear a big top-line number of the government announcing their funding of $199 million over four years, but how much of that money is going to these staff increases for more bureaucrats in Canberra and is less money for artists and communities on the ground where it actually matters? This has been redirected from a number of places. With the government having cancelled several programs previously funded by the coalition government, including the temporary support fund and the balance of the Location Incentive Program, every dollar that goes to fund bureaucrats is a dollar that cannot go to artists, performers and people in the arts sector who deliver actual arts activities that can entertain and inspire Australians.

This re-naming of existing programs and game playing with arts budgets is an increasingly familiar feature of this government. Let's consider the perplexing appearance and subsequent disappearance of Minister Burke's Live Performance Support Fund. We've had five press releases, we've got to remember that. We've got the press releases. But he announced in the October budget as part of a $38.6 million supporting the arts program it was going to deliver funds for plays, concerts and festivals from November 2022 to February 2023. Sounds great. Very exciting. That's great investment into the arts. But, suddenly, we didn't hear any more about it.

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