Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Brandis, the Minister for the Arts and Sport. Will the minister inform the Senate how the government’s sound management of the Australian economy has benefited the arts in Australia? Is the minister aware of any alternative policies?

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Adams for her question and acknowledge her deep interest in the arts in Western Australia. As Senator Adams has identified, the good economic management of the Howard government has produced many beneficial effects. By bringing the budget back into surplus by paying off $96 billion of Labor Party debt, we are able to avoid wasting $8.5 billion a year in interest payments and return that money to taxpayers or invest it in beneficial projects, including in the arts. The saving of $8.5 billion a year—which is $23 million a day and slightly less than $1 million an hour—in interest that Australia was paying under the previous Labor government has enabled us, among many other beneficial measures, to announce in the budget on 8 May the largest increase in real terms in arts funding that Australia has seen.

I might detain the Senate for a moment by comparing arts funding under the Howard government to arts funding under the Keating government. In the budget announced by Mr Costello on 8 May, arts funding in this financial year will be $681.1 million—the highest level ever and an increase on the last year of the Keating government of 65.8 per cent. That includes increasing the funding of the Australia Council by 121 per cent, increasing the funding of the National Gallery of Australia by 137 per cent and increasing the funding of the National Library of Australia by 62 per cent. As you might expect, the outstanding outcomes for arts policy in the budget were met with excitement by the sector. Reporting the reaction of the sector in the Australian the following Thursday, Miriam Cosic and Rosemary Sorensen wrote this:

It’s a rare thing to hear the arts community congratulating the Howard Government, but yesterday, as companies combed through the detail of the arts component of Tuesday’s budget, the refrain was the same.

“It’s a good result,” says Helen O’Neil, executive director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group. “Australia’s artists will be celebrating today,” says Tamara Winikoff, executive director of the National Association for the Visual Arts.

I would like to share also with the Senate a letter I received from Jill Berry, the General Manager of The Bell Shakespeare Company. She said, ‘Bell Shakespeare in particular will enjoy an increase of approximately 65 per cent on our base Nugent funding model.’ The entire industry will be greatly buoyed by this announcement, and the many other visionary arts funding decisions in the budget papers—probably the most significant of them being the decision to invest in the small to medium arts sector.

It is something of an urban myth that the Australian Labor Party attracts a greater level of support from the arts sector than does the government. It is not so. I was told, for example, by one of the most respected and senior arts administrators in Australia that the funding of the arts under this government has been, to use his words, ‘incomparably better’ than it ever was under the Labor government and that this government has, again to quote his words, been ‘incredibly generous’ to the sector. That is a view that is echoed across the sector. If perhaps Senator Adams would ask me a supplementary question, I will share some further insights with her.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.