Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Creative Australia Amendment (Implementation of Revive) Bill 2024. I confidently predict that the contents of this bill will have almost zero practical impact on the creative and artistic life of this nation. This bill establishes two new parts of Creative Australia and expands the governance structure to provide more support to Australia's First Nations arts and literature sectors. The bill also outlines the responsibilities of First Nations Arts and Writing Australia together with their respective governing bodies, the First Nations Board and the Writing Australia Council.

The background to this bill is that Labor made an election promise in 2022 to introduce the much-hyped National Cultural Policy. Two years later we are here in this space, with Labor only now getting around to introducing legislation giving effect to elements of their policy. As part of the National Cultural Policy to date, we've seen the name of the Australia Council change to Creative Australia. For those who liked the term 'Australia Council', do not fear; it continues to be used as the name for the board of Creative Australia. I hope everybody has got that and I hope that's crystal clear.

With Creative Australia, the government committed to establishing four new bureaucratic edifices within the overarching structure of Creative Australia. Two of those, Music Australia and Creative Workplaces, have already been established. This legislation establishes the two remaining bureaucratic edifices, with the First Nations body to take effect on 1 July 2024, assuming this legislation passes in time, and that will mean it comes into effect more than two years after Labor came to government. The Writing Australia body will take effect on 1 July 2025, coming into effect more than three years after Labor came to government.

The bill before the House this afternoon will establish the boards of these two bodies: the Writing Australia board with nine board members and the First Nations board with 10 board members. These boards will report to the Australia Council board, which is another board that can have up to 14 members. In practice this means, for example, that the officials who work within the Writing Australia unit of Creative Australia will be in the fortunate position of having up to 23 board members overseeing their activities, and there's no doubt in my mind that that will cause spirits to soar amongst that particular group of officials. This bill is entirely consistent with the central overriding principle of Burkean arts administration: the single most important policy objective is to increase the number of bureaucrats and officials charged with overseeing artistic and creative endeavours in Australia. That is, of course—I hardly need to add—a very different thing to delivering specific measures that actually increase the vigour, extent and dynamism of artistic and creative activities in Australia.

The Albanese Labor government likes to boast about its support and its enthusiasm for the arts, but, when you look at the reality, they have sadly failed to substantiate words with action. The inexplicably slow and piecemeal establishment of the four bureaucratic edifices within Creative Australia is not the only aspect of arts policy where we have seen a go-slow of a kind that 1970s union leaders would look on with admiration. In the last budget, Labor promised to attract additional international investment in the Australian screen sector to provide additional domestic employment and training opportunities by increasing the location offset to 30 per cent. Twelve months on, this Labor government has still not given effect to that commitment. Industry stakeholders tell me that Labor is keeping them in a state of uncertainty, and investors, unsurprisingly, are holding back from committing investments, as they wait to see whether the government will in fact pass legislation to give effect to its commitment. Bizarrely, Labor has chosen to combine the legislative provisions to increase the location offset into a bill that contains other unrelated and controversial propositions dealing with financial advisors.

The coalition stands ready to help Labor fix the mess it has created when it comes to the location offset. The coalition has written to the government to advise that, should the government strip out the unrelated and controversial parts from the bill, the coalition will then commit to supporting the efficient passage of the bill through the parliament so we can get the increased location offset in place as quickly as possible.

We have also seen a mysterious delay in the report of the parliamentary inquiry into Labor's much-hyped national cultural policy. The Senate committee conducting the review was due to issue its report on 20 June this year; that has now been delayed to 26 March next year. This nine-month delay suggests that the policy is falling well short of the breathless hype which accompanied it. All of this comes at a time when the arts sector is hurting.

Thanks to the home-grown inflation and cost-of-living crisis which this inept Labor government has created, it is unsurprising that popular music festivals have been cancelled with their operating costs becoming unsustainable and with audiences finding it ever more challenging to afford ticket prices. We see a steady drumbeat of announcements of festivals being cancelled, including the 2023 addition of the Falls Festival, Valleyways, Coastal Jam and Vintage Vibes, and the pausing of Hobart's iconic Dark Mofo for 2024. We have seen venues like Brisbane's The Zoo close their doors. This is a sector crying out for help, but their pleas are falling on deaf ears. As one writer observed recently in the Conversation, the Australian live music industry is in crisis.

The coalition believes that arts funding should, as much as possible, go to support artists, performers and arts workers—backstage crew, ushers, front of house—all of the people who work to deliver a great show for those who are there to see it. Whether it's performing arts, visual arts or literature, getting the money to the front line is a very good principle and a principle almost entirely absent from the policy initiatives in the arts portfolio under this Labor government and this minister.

The former coalition government understood the vital importance of the arts sector, and we matched our words with funding. The historical record shows that record Commonwealth arts funding was achieved under the previous coalition government—more than $1 billion of funding for the arts sector in 2021-22. Labor's budget this year, as for their previous two budgets, has again fallen short of that high watermark achieved under the coalition. Under the former coalition government, $200 million was allocated through our RISE Fund, supporting 541 shows, performances, festivals and events around the country. Indeed, when Labor came to government there was a further $20 million in the RISE Fund available to spend, but the new arts minister, rather than spending it, cancelled the program.

When we were in government, we increased the Producer Offset to 30 per cent for television and streaming productions. We committed over $400 million under the Location Incentive, bringing a pipeline of over 30 global screen productions to Australia. All of that was consistent with the principle that we thought, and continue to think, should be the central principle of arts administration in Australia: getting the funding to those who need it on the front line, to those who use the funding to deliver shows, events, productions, festivals, rather than directing yet more funding to bureaucrats in Canberra.

Let me conclude by stating the coalition's position in relation to this bill. We believe it is entirely inconsequential. We believe it will make no practical difference in the extent and vigour of creative and artistic endeavour in Australia. We believe it is the kind of legislation you come up with when you want to pretend you have a meaningful agenda but in fact you do not. We will not be opposing this bill, but we do not believe it is the kind of thing that an effective arts minister would be concentrating his attention and energy on.

Debate adjourned.