Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Creative Australia Bill 2023, which will effectively establish Creative Australia. I can guarantee you one thing, and that is that, if you go to the public service and ask for advice on how to streamline agencies, processes and principles, the answer will always be to create another agency—because more bureaucrats is always the solution. I get it; I totally understand: you want to create further career opportunities and pathways for yourselves. But it is not always the right thing to do.

I do support the Creative Australia Bill, because I support the intent of what the Creative Australia Bill is setting out to achieve. There are certainly aspects of the bill which are very welcome, including the recognition not only that we need to tell our own stories but also that Australians, regardless of heritage, background or geographic location, deserve to be able to access art, practise art, produce art, write their stories, sing their songs and perform on their stages. But, as always, the devil will be in the detail.

This bill creates the Australia Council Board, which will oversee Creative Australia. The Australia Council is being wound up, but we're still going to name the board the Australia Council Board. It is going to increase board from 12 to 14. That might be okay. They are going to be appointed by the minister. There is nothing in my reading of it that says it has to be a merits-based selection process or anything like that. This is a typical ministerial appointment process, which we on this side don't actually disagree with—because, as a minister, you are elected to make these tough decisions. We get lectured constantly from those on the other side that ministerial appointments are only jobs for the boys; yet, every time they set up a new body, they go down this path of having ministerial appointments. So what is it? Is it jobs for the boys, or do you actually agree that ministers are smart enough to make merits-based appointments?

With a new board of 14, I certainly hope that there is a more genuine geographic distribution than is currently on the Australia Council board. They are all imminent people, but there is only one member of the current board based outside of a capital city. That is Mr Philip Watkins from Alice Springs, and he is absolutely deserving of being on this board. But wouldn't it be good if there were more than just one regional voice on this board that is looking at and advising—to use the terminology from Senator Grogan—an investment body? It is an investment body and this board will advise them. Wouldn't it be good if we had more than just one regional voice?

I will tell you where art begins. It begins in the grassroots. It begins from the very foundation. As Senator Hanson-Young said, it begins in the classroom and it begins at home. But it doesn't matter whether that home is in Bondi or whether it is in the red dirt of Central Australia—there are amazing stories. I can attest to one story of a fabulous little organisation, Outback Theatre for Young People, which is headquartered in Deniliquin, my hometown. Yes, once upon a time I was on their board and I was associated with them as a chair. They have a staff of 1.5 full-time employees. They manage a turnover of around $300,000 to $400,000 in a good year. It's all grants based. So those 1.5 employees have to write the grants, have to come up with the programs, have to source artists to embed, because their practice model is that they embed in regional communities. They've done circus works at Balranald. They've done work with the School of the Air out at Wilcannia. They've worked with new migrant Australians in Swan Hill to help create art that creates understanding, that works with people to bring them all together. And this is with 1.5 people.

When you're talking regional arts, the return on investment is phenomenal. But, when you're talking about people who come from our capital cities, who look at how many audience numbers they can get, they look at the black and white—What is the audience number? How much can the audience pay? What's our return on investment in dollar value? It's incomparable. You can't compare arts in low-socioeconomic areas where mums and dads can't afford to pay $20 see their child on stage. But they want to see their child on stage. They can't afford to pay for lighting and big production costs, but old Fred from down the road is happy to turn the spotties in his ute on to light up the back of a flat bed truck so those kids can perform on that stage. That establishes a sense of community and fosters dreams. A lot of the kids I'm talking about who've worked on these productions through this little organisation have gone on to do other things. They dream big, and that's a great thing.

Where do you think you get the Australian Ballet ballerinas? They're not all born and bred in leafy suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne. Some of them went to the Dubbo Ballet School. Good on them! We want to see more of that. What I can't see in the detail of this bill is how we're going to make sure that grassroots arts are funded and that they're absolutely supported. How is this bill making it easier for organisations like the Outback Theatre for Young People to put in grant applications so that they're not competing against the big city based theatre companies? It should be more like for like that they're competing against.

I do appreciate and acknowledge that in the Creative Australia brochures that have been put out there is a commitment to increase the regional arts funds. I absolutely welcome that, but I will be watching very closely to see how that's rolled out. One thing we do know is that, while much is being made about the new body getting an extra $199 million over four years, it's not new money. It's money that's been taken from other areas. It's been redirected from a number of places. The current government has cancelled several programs that our government established specifically, as Senator Hanson-Young said, for during COVID, when the arts industry was on its knees. Some of them, like the RISE Fund, were very welcome and very good at achieving their intent of funding artists on the ground, of getting artists out and practising. It wasn't funding to pay for an extra 32 per cent increase in staffing, as the current budget has identified. The average staffing level for the Australia Council will go up by 32 per cent in 12 months. That's not artists being supported. That's not artists practising their art. That's not audiences getting to enjoy Australian culture. That's just the version of streamlining that we see repeatedly over time.

As I said earlier, I will be supporting this, because I really do genuinely support the intent. But I will be looking at the detail and its implementation. I will be watching the results, and I will be asking at estimates, as I do and as I have done for the last four years, how much of the spend is going to hit the ground in the regions, and how much of our representation and how much recognition are we giving to our really good artists in the regions who can step up, who have the skills and the knowledge, so that they can be represented on the Creative Australia board. So I will support it. I will watch it closely. I thank the government for their significant consultation on preparing this bill. But our support for this bill today is not a blank cheque to ignore artists and just fund more public servants.