Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm trying, Senator! But I take up some of the points of the previous speaker. What is art? What is culture? This is what it comes down to. We don't live to work; we work to live—and we live to love. And art should bring joy, art should make you think and art should educate, but art should be balanced. For so long, the arts and culture area has gone along in trends and waves, and ups and downs. It's not about one government or other. There are creative bursts. There are things to talk about. There are discussions that go on. So it's an area, as I am becoming familiar with it, that we must support.

The coalition will be supporting this bill today, as I said. But, as Senator Davey previously said, let us not forget the regions. I think Senator Henderson also said this, but, out of all the people I've engaged with who are teaching me what I need to know, none of them have said that we need more bureaucrats—not one. I think this bill increases some of the departmental staff by 32 per cent, but that's not what they're seeing. They're seeing more help at the beginning of their careers. What was really interesting was the difference across different genres. If you're in film, screen or TV, there is help right at the beginning with things such as YouTube, self-made videos and self-made promotions. There's help at the top and a gap in the middle, in that transition from amateur to professional.

Yet an industry just as big in the arts and cultural portfolio is computer games, and that is coming through. I think there's a Treasury laws amendment with a digital games tax offset that will help that. There are directors and sound technicians that cross over, and all the things that happen there cross over into the film world. I look forward to that bill hopefully coming in next week before the financial year ends, which will assist them. They have help at the middle and top, but that beginning phase is difficult.

We need to open this access to all. I think there are different focuses to the funding that the coalition would have done, but we welcome any more funding going into this. We welcome the industry going into this area. What we would really like to see is some certainty in funding over an ongoing period, to allow people to make times and to see a certainty in their future. I still owe Aysha Galloway and her writing crew and some friends in Sydney. They gave me some tips, some pizza and a sit-down about where they see this going and what's going on in the future.

What is interesting is that art is not a thing anyone can define other than in the way that they see it. Culture is the same. For me, going to Mount Panorama, of all places, and seeing that white stone installation on the side of that hill moved something in me. It might not be what other people would see.