Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to grieve about a number of issues this evening, the first of which is the 2014-15 budget decision to freeze financial assistance grants to local government councils at 2013-14 levels. This will have an enormous impact on my own electorate of Lingiari, with over $11 million over three years being taken out of the budgets of local government councils, including amounts such as $424,000 from the East Arnhem Regional Council, $480,000 from the Barkly Regional Council in Tennant Creek and $159,000 from my own council in Alice Springs, which has just recently published its draft budget. To maintain its existing services, it will have to increase rates and charges for community services. A substantial part of this great increase is due to the cuts that result from this government freeze. Every time people in Alice Springs go to the dump or register a pet or put their bin out for weekly collection, they can thank the Abbott government for the extra they pay for these services. I am sure they will remember this when their rate notices arrive in the mail. The Australian Local Government Association has its annual meeting in Canberra in two weeks. Government members and senators will have to explain to local councils in their electorates why local government communities are not benefiting from the actions of this government.

The next matter I want to talk to about is the Barunga Festival, which is having its funding smashed. This coming week marks the 30th anniversary of perhaps Australia's most famous Indigenous arts, cultural and sporting festival, the Barunga Festival, which has been held annually since 1985. I have attended many of those celebrations. Recently the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Nigel Scullion, has threatened its longevity and future by denying it funding under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. Senator Scullion has said he will not support the festival unless it is shifted to the school holidays. A spokesman for the minister has said:

The Minister remains firm in his belief that festival funding should be prioritised to events hosted during school holidays so that festivals do not disrupt children's school attendance.

Barunga Festival organisers say that Minister Scullion misses the point and does not understand what happens at Barunga. It is an educational activity, and kids come for school camps from surrounding communities with their teachers to learn, participate and engage with other students. Every year, as long as I can remember, Barunga has made a vibrant and well-thought-out kids program that engaged children in the arts, culture, sporting activities and equally important cross-cultural programs. In recent years Barunga Community Education Centre has run a very successful and innovative Jawoyn junior rangers program, where schoolchildren were trained as tourist guides and guided visitors around the festival and their community. Last year they successfully raised $2,000.

Aboriginal children learn most from their elders, families and peers. Events like Barunga promote self-esteem, provide high-motivation learning opportunities and generally enrich Australian culture. The festival promotes Aboriginal people and culture and says strongly to the Australian community, especially children, 'You are part of Australian society and your culture is valued and important.

Minister Scullion's attack on Barunga endangers the continued existence of this festival. Entry prices have to be increased to such an extent that many remote Indigenous communities will find it hard to afford to attend—$60 for an adult—and without Aboriginal artists, cultural practitioners and sports persons you just do not have a festival. It is not too late, Minister Scullion—recant and fund the Barunga Festival appropriately.

The third matter I want to talk about is arts funding. The announcement in the federal budget that the Minister for the Arts, Senator George Brandis, has taken $105 million from Australia Council arts funding has severe ramifications for Territory arts organisations, and others around Australia. Nearly all Territory arts organisations rely on federal funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, an independent body that supposedly decides where funding goes according to artistic merit, not the political whim of the minister. The minister will now decide where the $105 million is spent. Long-running NT arts organisations will all be affected. They met on the weekend to discuss their concerns. Most of these and many other Territory arts organisations have been told that they must apply for annual funding through an arts grant scheme rather than receive dollars through triennial and in some case six-yearly funding cycles. The previous scheme allowed arts organisations to plan ahead and, more importantly, employ artists

Organisations impacted upon in my electorate include Browns Mart in Darwin, Tracks Dance out of Darwin and Barkly Regional Arts, all very successful regional organisations encouraging talent, organising festivals and other events and properly carrying out the remit that the Northern Territory community requires of them—that is, to provide good access to art, including performance art, throughout the Northern Territory. I have to declare an interest in this, because one of my daughters is a dancer with Independent Artist. She is a contemporary dancer, a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts. I was told last year there are only 38 full-time contemporary dance positions in this country. When you contemplate the effort that goes into training to be a dancer and the need to find employment, the independent arts movement, of which she is a member, finds it extremely difficult when the purse is closed, as it has been closed by the minister.    My daughter Frankie sent me this note:

Abolishing things like the Art Start program and the creative communities initiatives means there is no money available to early career artists to continue research and development or to inject art into communities.

Which essentially means you're cutting off the lifeblood of the arts. If there is no support for the next generation there is no one to continue on the development, reinvention and evolution of artistic forms, which essentially means they will die.

The New Measures or whatever it is recently just announced its first allocation to The Australian Ballet. This is an organisation that is one of THE most heavily funded in Australia not only via government money but also corporate sponsorship and philanthropy.

She points out the independent artists just cannot compete, and goes on:

And if this is what we can expect, if the money is being funnelled from (the minister's) piggy bank directly to companies like this who have received NO cuts to their already substantial funding—there is NO hope for the independent, small and medium sector.

She says the minister has absolutely has no idea. She continues:

We will not be competitive or interesting on a global scale so our reputation as a fertile and interesting breeding ground for the arts will disappear. The small amount of international artists who make it here will stop coming. We will isolate ourselves and thus the evolution, sharing and conversation that is imperative to artists will cease. We will regress into a cultural no-mans land. And all the artists will leave.

It seems the injection into small business, this "HAVE A GO" tag line does not apply to the thousands of artists who have been having a go, tirelessly, for decades.

It is a dark time in a country that has the opportunity, space and resources to support a thriving cultural community.

Or to put it more poetically,

Austerity measures

Prosperity tethers

strip the world of its beauty

A bird without feathers

The state of the art is not state of the art

Hands out of pockets

This is state VERSUS art.