Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Melbourne's west is lucky to be home to many small and medium-sized arts institutions and independent artists. I am proud to be a financial supporter of institutions like the Footscray Community Arts Centre, the Williamstown Literary Festival, the Newport Substation, Western Edge Youth Arts and a range of independent artists working in our community. On the wall of my parliamentary office there is a piece by Phuong Ngo, a Substation contemporary arts prize winner. In my Melbourne office there is a series by Pamela Debrincat, created as part of FCAC's ArtLife program. On my bookshelves are books by authors from Melbourne's west, including Alice Pung, Jane Rawson and Leigh Hobbs.

I personally support the arts in Melbourne's west; not only because my family and I patronise them—although we certainly do!—but because they enrich all of our lives, strengthen our community and contribute to the creative economy that has been emerging in the west for some years. Our artists tell our stories. They remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. They inspire us and console us and challenge us with our shared humanity. This is why successive Australian governments have publicly supported the arts in Australia. Yet now, Minister for the Arts George Brandis has cut funding to the Australia Council for the Arts and put himself in charge of over $100 million of funding over four years. Young and emerging artists, like so many of the artists in Melbourne's west, are bearing the brunt of these changes.

As a result of the Abbott government's budget measures, the Australia Council has announced that it will not proceed with the next round of arts funding grants and has stopped a number of programs and suspended funding for some organisations. The ArtStart, Creative Communities Partnerships Initiative and Artists in Residence programs will not be offered in the future. Many of these Australia Council programs are targeted at small and medium-sized organisations and at young and emerging artists—the artists in my community that I was talking about. The future of these organisations is now at the whim of Senator George Brandis. Yet weeks after the announcement of this decision, the minister still cannot explain how these decisions will be made. There is no policy rationale for this decision. It is just a naked, political attack on independent arts funding. The consequences of these changes cannot be overstated. They will devastate the fragile ecology of the Australian arts sector for a decade to come, and recovering from these cuts will be a long road indeed.

At its core, the arts is about storytelling. In standing against these cuts, I want to finish by sharing a local artist's story. This is his story about what these cuts will mean:

To be an artist in Australia, you have to be hard working, resourceful and frugal. And tough. Unlike the US and Europe, we don't have a tradition of philanthropy;

I worked as an artist, had some success, solo shows at good galleries, won a few prizes. Sold work.

It was a difficult way to live. In stark contrast to the idea many people have of artists, it was time consuming, emotionally draining and lonely.

What these artists did have until the last federal budget was a system of small grants to help artists make their work—money for materials and that sort of thing, money that more often than not went straight back into the local economy, assisting and making art along the way. Art is a wonderful and brilliant part of being human. Australians should be making art. Australia should look after its artists.