Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

That's the sad part! Considering this was before the age of COVID, perhaps we should have taken that as a warning for how eager modernity is to embrace a sheeplike existence. Suck it up!

In the middle of an economic crisis, as a result of government overreaction and wastage in the COVID years, the government has decided to undertake an unnecessary refurnishing of the arts, using money taken from places where it would have actually done some damn good. Modernising the arts and needlessly rebranding its bureaucracy is something a bored government does on a slow day when it's rolling in a surplus, not when we're in a crisis—a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a moral crisis, a social crisis.

First, we sat through Minister Burke and his 14 town hall meetings, worth $40,000, so that he could introduce himself to the cultural sector, apparently forgetting that he is caretaker of an existing and well-known department and not a freshly appointed CEO with a fragile ego. Instead of spending $40,000 of taxpayers' money on himself, perhaps Minister Burke could have given that money to the cultural sector and sent out a few tweets saying, 'Hi,' or maybe 'G'day,' and called the whole thing done. Maybe that's what he could have done.

The rest of the legislation behaves like the Tim Tam genie's infinite arts grants. We are told that in order to deliver the national cultural policy, of which this legislation is in service, $286 million will be provided in the next financial year—$286 million in 12 months. That's more than a quarter of a billion dollars. For perspective, $200 million is roughly the cost of the one million mental health appointments that the Labor government decided to cut from Medicare last year. Labor has looked at where that money should be spent and decided it's better off being handed over to this new Creative Australia and not on psychology sessions for Australians struggling with mental health.

What is it that the Australian taxpayer gets for that $286 million, aside from a bloated bureaucracy that spends its time drinking champagne and shaking hands, perhaps calling patrons of fine arts 'sheep' again? When was the last time the Australia Council showed some real diversity and inclusion and funded artworks and cultural endeavours from conservative artists? Where are the grants to preserve colonial artists and the enormous work they did recording Australia's pioneer days? What about artworks dedicated to the Western values of liberty and individualism? What could be more important? Artists protesting against the cruelty of big-state authority and abuse during the COVID years perhaps? That'll be a long wait, a very long wait. Their voices are exiled from this so-called inclusive publicly funded boondoggle.

The sort of arts and culture funded by the previous Australia Council is not rich and diverse; it's a saturated market of climate-apocalypse propaganda, seen through the prism of race and religion and ideology. Their corporate strategy says exactly that:

It includes emphases on access and equity, advocacy for the vital role of arts and culture, and investing in arts and creativity that reflects and connects the many communities that make up contemporary Australia.

It doesn't say, 'We are committed to funding excellence and achievement for talented individuals in the arts community.' It doesn't say that. The Australia Council even threw in some World Economic Forum propaganda for good measure, stating:

The technologies of the fourth industrial revolution are transforming and disrupting industries, economies, and how we interact with our world and each other.

Wonderful! This isn't art. It's politics—international, unelected bureaucratic politics and ideology of the elites, the globalist predators, masquerading as art and funded by taxpayers. What was it doing on the Australia Council website? Why? What was it? And will Creative Australia adopt the same fealty to foreign powers? Two hundred and eighty-six million dollars is the reward for hijacking the arts sector to promote a woke ideology over an artistic one. I'll say that again: a woke ideology over an artistic ideology, an artistic culture. The inclusion of Aboriginal art as the predominant destination of Creative Australia funding suggests this is another bribe to support the Voice. It's coming at us from every angle. That shows that they're actually desperate.

Creative Australia is advocating that the arts become all about 'a place for every story and a story for every place'. I'm sure the public is trembling in anticipation of that agenda—'agenda' being the operative word. It suggests the government is doubling down on woke and calling it art. The government hasn't realised that, in order to increase the reach of arts and culture, you let the free market direct the program. That ensures that the program meets people's real needs. You allow the people to reward artwork that appeals to and connects with them. That ensures that it meets people's real needs.

Artists that produce rubbish should not be funded simply because they flatter the Labor-Greens-teal government. Their work is drowning out more deserving artists who are rejected because Creative Australia does not like their politics. There's a reason working-class families in Australia save up for years to fly to the other side of the world and stand beneath Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. When was the last time a product of the Australia Council left millions of international tourists in awe, questioning the human limits of skill and vision? The answer is never—never—because you cannot buy culture, no matter how much taxpayer money Minister Burke throws at it.