Glenn Lazarus (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee on arts programs and funding, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

In tabling this report I would like to thank the arts community, who united together to vocalise their objection to the establishment of the NPEA and the resultant cuts to the Australia Council. What became clear throughout the hearings was that the arts sector, including the Australia Council, was never consulted by the government at any stage when making the budget announcements, including policy changes and funding cuts to the arts sector. Understandably, the arts sector was angered and upset by this.

I learned a lot in being part of this arts inquiry. I learned how important the arts sector is to our social fabric and our economic and mental wellbeing. I learned that art is more than a physical product; it is an extension of our culture and a reflection of who we are as people. I am grateful for the experience of working so closely with the arts sector and thank everyone involved for their time and commitment to the arts sector and the inquiry.

I would also like to apologise for the behaviour of certain senators during the public hearings. Our role as representatives of the people is to listen and to act in the best interests of all Australians. I am ashamed of the way some senators behaved. As the chair of the committee, I sincerely apologise for the inappropriate and unacceptable actions of certain senators, who have clearly forgotten why they entered politics in the first place.

In summary, the arts community rallied together, and through the inquiry, and the publicity generated from public hearings, the government did listen—although only slightly—and made some changes, which in the scheme of things were small concessions in response to big community objections to silly government actions. Despite this, I hope the government adopts all of the recommendations of the committee and, importantly, develops, in consultation with the arts sector, a clear national arts policy, returns all the funds to the Australia Council and finds additional funding for Catalyst.

I would like to thank the secretary and all of her team. I would also like to thank Hansard. I commend this report to the Senate.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will start by congratulating the former arts minister, Senator Brandis, on reform of arts funding and for putting out draft guidelines to enable further consultation on this issue. I also congratulate the current Minister for the Arts, Senator Fifield, for the new proposals he has put forward for Catalyst, which resulted from his and the government's consultation on these issues. Of course, that is why you put out draft guidelines—so that you can have further consultations.

Regrettably, the chair of this committee and most of the members were too inexperienced or unworldly to understand the whole process, and that is what it was all about. From the start this was a cynical attempt by the opposition, the Greens political party and a green Independent senator to politicise reform of arts funding. Claims by the majority attempted to create a divisive and combative atmosphere that characterises the government as inherently opposed—

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, on a point of order: I do not think there is such thing as a green Independent senator. The senator is misleading the chamber.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Whish-Wilson, that is not a point of order.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is typical of the Greens and the Labor Party to stop free speech when anything that is being said is truthful and does not suit their political agenda. That group of people set out to create a division within the arts community, to force them into taking a position against the government and to use arts and culture funding as a platform to launch a cynical political attack that lacks any factual basis and created uncertainty. This is a committee where the majority—Labor, Greens and green Independents—got together and set meetings at a time when they knew no government senator was available. They set hearing dates when they knew government senators were not available to be there.

For some reason the Greens, the Labor Party and the green Independent think that the arts community should be quarantined from the austerity measures which every other portfolio had to meet. If it had not been for the Labor Party running up a debt that was approaching $700 billion then there would have been lots of money for the arts and everything else. The recommendations of the majority are 'more money for this, more money for that and more money for the other', but none of them will ever have the issue of trying to find the money. It is okay to say, 'Yes, give everybody what they ask for.' Wouldn't we as politicians love to be in that position? 'Ask for some money and you'll get it.' If it had not been for the Labor Party running up a debt of $700 billion, perhaps we could have given everybody everything they asked for.

These efficiencies in the arts funding were part of the process of trying to pay off Labor's debt. I should mention that the Australia Council funding under the last year of Labor—now listen to these figures—was $188,000. The following year in the coalition government it went up to $218,000. The following year it came down a bit to $211,000, still more than the $188,000 provided by Labor. In the last financial year, with all the efficiency measures to try to help pay off Labor's debt, it reduced to $184,000, which is much the same as the last contribution from the last Labor government, yet that is not mentioned. Hullo! It is the coalition government that is cutting all the funds to the arts, but it is the same funding that the Labor Party produced. We never heard about that. Typically of the cynical political nature of this inquiry, suddenly it was wrong for the government, which is elected by the people, to have some say in how the taxpayers' money was being spent. And why is this appropriate? Because governments make decisions and they are accountable every three years. If people do not like them, they throw out the government.

What the Labor Party, the Greens and the Green Independent wanted was to give this to an independent body that is really accountable to no-one. They put in an annual report once a year but they are not subject to any direction from the people of Australia who are paying the funds. So there was a great who-ha about how terrible this was. But find in evidence—and it is listed in the dissenting report—that the proposal introduced by the Mr Morrison follows the exact same procedure that all the state governments do, half of which are Labor. But hang on; it is okay if Labor state governments are doing it this way but if it is a coalition government, a federal government doing it exactly the same way, then good heavens, the sky is going to fall in! That just demonstrated yet again how politically partisan this whole inquiry was and how absolutely ridiculous the whole process was.

We had teams of people being encouraged to come in—and that is there in evidence, too—to make these points but they were all on a draft set of guidelines. As I said many a time, if the inquiry were serious, it was held too early because there was nothing there to inquire into because they were draft guidelines. But unfortunately the majority of the committee could not understand that very simple point. On the whole report of the majority there are some 83 pages complaining about the draft guidelines but on the real program, the Catalyst program, there are only three pages. So again it shows how will how hypocritical and politically partisan this was.

The majority report praises the level of consistency in the evidence. That is pretty obvious because the majority of the committee selected those who would give evidence at selected hearings and they selected only the sorts of people who shared their view. If you had a different view, you were not even called. The locations for the various hearings were at places where government senators could not get in the early stages.

Opposition senators interjecting—

There was one place I was pleased the committee did go to, but it was on my motion—

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What's wrong with you?

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senators to my left, you have been interjecting consistently. I have let most of it go through but it is now becoming overwhelming. I am even having trouble hearing Senator Macdonald.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does not worry me, Madam Acting Deputy President. This is typical of the Labor Party and the Greens. They shout down anyone who does not have their view or who, more importantly, tells the truth about this cynical, politically-partisan inquiry, which has been an abject waste of taxpayers' money. The inquiry did at least go to Cairns on my motion that it move out of the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra triangle, the golden triangle, and at least get to some places where the regional arts communities could have a say. That is one of the problems: most of the arts funding goes to Sydney or to Melbourne or to the major capital cities. The new program of the coalition government is trying to balance the moneys that are given to the arts communities so that some of it at least goes to rural and regional Australia and to Queensland and Western Australia. There is evidence of all of that.

I have to say that I was concerned by elements of the testimony provided to the committee that seemed to betray an unhealthy sense of entitlement to financial support of the taxpayer in the absence of effective oversight of the regulatory regime. We have a wonderful arts community in Australia.

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Bilyk, if you would like to speak on this report, you will have an opportunity to do so.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We do very clever things in arts and culture. There does seem to be an unhealthy sense of entitlement that taxpayers should fund things which people have a passion for doing. As I pointed out, the chairman, in one of his better moods, had a passion for football but he did not get taxpayer funding to pursue his aim to go on to become a champion and a very wealthy man because of his football career, but some of the artists think the taxpayers should be providing that funding all the time.

Time has escaped me, but I simply ask anyone who is interested in this to read the dissenting report, which accurately and, with evidence noted, points out just what a political farce this will inquiry was. I conclude by congratulating both Senator Brandis and Senator Fifield on their attempts to bring reform to arts funding. (Time expired)

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is funny because I have a quote from the chairman of the Theatre Council of Tasmania, Mr Rod Anderson:

'Ignorant arrogance' or 'arrogant ignorance'—I just cannot make up my mind between the two.

That is how Mr Rod Anderson so eloquently described the thought process behind the creation of Minister George Brandis' National Program for Excellence in the Arts slush fund at the Hobart public hearing. It is a view reflected in evidence given by the concerned, angry, upset and bewildered witnesses, evidence given by hundreds of artists and arts administrators to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs inquiry into arts funding decisions. In the 10 public hearings I attended across the country, the committee heard passionate, intelligent and extremely hard-working artists who did not understand the motivation for this government's continued attacks on the arts in the last two budgets.

The committee travelled right across Australia, to every state and territory, to hear evidence from members of the arts community. The Liberal government had failed to engage, no matter what Senator Macdonald said, and they had failed to consult and to listen to the arts community. So someone owed it to the artists to listen and that is what this inquiry did, because the decisions made in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 budgets were not in the best interests of the arts. They were not designed to build the sector in a meaningful way. They undermined, and devalued the work of thousands of artists over decades. They arrogantly and thoughtlessly smashed institutions that had been carefully crafted for decades, and demonstrated that the government fundamentally did not understand the sector. Decisions were made not by a minister for the arts, but by a minister against the arts. The effects were drastic, are ongoing and will be felt for decades to come.

While others have argued that this inquiry was partisan, it was referred to the committee not only by the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens but also—for those listening—by all eight members of the crossbench. It was not a party political issue, but one of genuine cross-party concern about the radical decisions made by the coalition government in 2014 and 2015 in relation to arts funding, and their potentially disastrous implications for the future of the arts in Australia. The almost unanimous view from the arts community was that the government's arts policy is terrible. When a last-minute, unscheduled witness who supported the NPEA and the government's position was finally found—they finally found one witness—the committee made time for their evidence to be heard. If the government had put up other witnesses, we would have been happy to hear from them, but they could not find anyone else to support the unsupportable.

The Senate inquiry was unlike any that I have experienced before. I have been here since the 2007 election and serving since July 2008. Rarely do you get more than a handful of people at a Senate public hearing, but there was a full house at every single hearing of this arts inquiry. We could have sold tickets and, given the eloquence, passion and intelligence of the witnesses, we would have got our money's worth. The atmosphere was electric, witnesses were given rounds of applause, cartoonists live sketched and tweeted the hearings and witnesses and audience members interjected good-naturedly. You rarely see—and I do hope I never see again—a witness bullied by a government senator so badly that the hearing paused to give them time to compose themselves. That is shameful. I would like to thank all the witnesses, who shone brilliantly. I would especially like to thank those people who spent all day at the hearings. They often brought their cut lunches and thermoses along to support their fellow artists.

The arts community as a whole should be commended for the way they organised themselves so strongly in opposition to these policies. They rallied and spoke out publicly in print and in newspapers. They drew and painted and photographed their opposition. They supported each other, gave each other voice and acted in a coordinated manner to oppose policies that are fundamentally wrong. Surely, if anything, this is the definition of excellence.

The inquiry received over 2,719 submissions by its deadline of mid-July. This is an extraordinary figure for a Senate inquiry. Sometimes you receive only a handful of submissions and sometimes you might receive a couple of hundred. There were so many submissions that it proved a significant challenge to process them, and I thank everyone for their patience while they were being processed and published. In fact, the secretariat told us today that they had four people trying to get the submissions up at once, and that they broke the website. That is how much interest there has been.

Submissions came from a broad range of people and groups, including small, medium and large organisations working in every area of the arts. Academic experts, local and state government bodies, individual artists and members of the public, visual artists, writers, designers, dancers, philanthropists, academics, Indigenous artists, arts administrators, urban artists and regional artists all wrote to the committee to outline their concerns. The lack of witnesses supporting the NPEA was a genuine reflection of how poorly the program is viewed by the artistic community, not a reflection of the witnesses who were selected to appear before the committee. Any contrary view is not borne out by the truth and the facts. Time and time again the committee was told of the interconnectedness of the arts ecology, where artists work for multiple organisations in different roles to put together innovative new work on shoestring budgets. The greatest funders for the arts were actually the artists themselves, who give millions of hours of unpaid time every year. It is this that the government simply does not understand.

Government funding is vital. It is the vital spark that is needed to keep the arts going. This Senate report is calling for a complete reversal of the disastrous arts decisions that have been made by this government. The committee recommends that the budget funding taken from the Australia Council in 2014 and 2015 be returned. If the government insists on proceeding with the Catalyst slush fund, then they should find new money to fund it. The committee also recommends that Catalyst, if it proceeds, should adopt the same peer review register and processes as the Australia Council to reduce red tape and to ensure the fund is independent from inappropriate ministerial interference. The committee also recommends that funding be restored to ArtStart or a similar program directed towards early career artists, as well as to Screen Australia and to support interactive games.

I would like to sincerely thank—as Senator Lazarus did, but I do not think Senator Macdonald bothered to—the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee secretariat for the marvellous job they have done and for the patience they have shown in organising public hearings and crafting the report. It is no mean feat to organise 10 public hearings with over 200 witnesses and over 2,700 submissions, and they did a marvellous job in keeping the inquiry on track and in preparing the report. I would also like to thank Senator Lazarus and the other members of the committee who participated—Senator Collins, Senator Ludwig and Senator Ludlam. I would particularly like to thank Senator Lazarus for his decent and fair chairing. Senator Lazarus, I know it was not always easy for you and, in fact, I think you pulled me up a couple of times. When complete untruths are being told, it is important that you managed to keep things on track, so thank you. Obviously, I would also like to thank the Hansard staff for their great work.

Let me say this: while the Senate inquiry is over, the fight is not. These policies are a catalyst for disaster. There is $12 million in a ministerial slush fund for allocation by direction of the minister, a fact that is in conflict with the principle of hands-off funding allocation for the arts. This government has no issue with multinational corporations shifting billions of dollars in profits overseas in dodgy tax minimisation principles, yet it will hack the arts to the bone. If Minister Fifield wants to keep this disastrous policy, he needs to find new money for it. The Australia Council's grants program has been slashed, and it will be impossible for them to continue to fund the same number of key organisations as they currently do.

The revolutionary model of six-year funding for organisations is now but a memory and organisations that were applying for this round have had their time, energy and passion wasted on a round that did not go ahead. Instead, they applied for the four-year grant round that closed yesterday, in the knowledge that there is considerably less funding for these organisations to continue.

Any or all of the eight organisations in Tasmania could lose their key organisation funding. The loss of any could move the industry past the tipping point. Wonderful organisations creating excellent and innovative work will close because Senator Brandis saw himself as a modern day Medici, a generous patron who could bathe in reflected glory of the contemporary Michelangelo he patronised. Such personal weakness has done untold damage to the Australian arts community, and we are looking at a scenario where the entire Tasmanians arts ecosystem could collapse due to these arrogant, short-sighted policy changes. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Ludlam, you want to speak to this report?

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would be delighted to speak to this report. It has been months in the making. I would also like to add my thanks to Senator Lazarus and his staff. I have only chaired a handful of committees in my time here and it can be hard work, particularly with the kinds of extraordinary displays of petulance that we saw which actually did go some way towards spoiling some of the hearings. Nonetheless, it was a remarkable experience and unlike any committee work that I have done before.

This report has been months in the works. It is a really rare event—and we saw it again today, not that long ago with Senator Whish-Wilson's motion for an inquiry into the procurement of the joint strike fighter—that unites the opposition, the Australian Labor Party, the Australian Greens and all eight of the crossbenchers, in all of their glorious diversity. This was one of those things that united everybody against an extraordinary decision, announced to the head of the Australia Council during the afternoon on budget day by mobile phone call from Senator George Brandis, who effectively threw himself and the entire arts community under a bus. He was rewarded for that extraordinary intervention by losing the portfolio, one of the lesser heralded but, I would say, more important portfolio reshuffle decisions that incoming Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made.

When the coalition can only be bothered to send Senator Macdonald in to defend an utterly debacular policy, then you know that something is really seriously amiss. And he did them proud. If anybody outside this building listening in is wondering what this debate is all about and how the government could possibly have got arts policy so desperately wrong, do yourselves a favour and download the video or check the Hansard for what Senator Ian Macdonald just put on the record about 20 minutes ago. This is an individual who uniquely combines aggression with total cluelessness, unlike anybody else in this chamber that I am aware of.

If you want to know just how badly the government got it wrong, watch Senator Macdonald's humiliating rant. Senator Lazarus was too polite to name him, but Senator Macdonald behaved like an unhinged and tantrum-prone five-year-old, in a way that reduced one witness to tears and forced the chair's hand on a number of occasions. I do not use words as strongly as this against individuals very often in this place. I do not know what the Queensland LNP have on their minds.

The entire arts community of this country were insulted, but they did put in a spirited defence of themselves and the institutions that they have helped create, over decades of establishing an arms-length, peer-reviewed Commonwealth funding body for arts body. It is not like there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of funds washing around for the arts community. The Free the Arts campaign and those from Feral Arts and others who played an informal convening role absolutely did the arts community proud.

Let's talk briefly about the report that was handed down. It is not a unanimous report. People who have been following this issue would not be surprised to know that the coalition has provided a half-hearted, rearguard defence of Senator Brandis's policy. But, actually, I do not think there is a single person in this building—maybe Senator Macdonald aside—who really believes that this was a good idea. It was not a good idea. Ripping a hundred million bucks out of a cash-strapped entity that has developed painstaking ways of dispersing that money to where the peers in the artistic community believe it should go, just rocking up without any warning or any consultation at all and ripping such a huge amount of money out of there and throwing it into a government slush fund was never going to be received particularly well.

The essence of the recommendations by the opposition, the Australian Greens and crossbenchers who participated effectively go to the fact that, by all means, if you want this new entity, knock yourselves out. We do not understand it. We think the guidelines should be dramatically improved if you keep it. But if you insist on keeping this new thing that we are now apparently having to call Catalyst, fund it from somewhere else. Find the money from somewhere else. Maybe you could just cancel out of the joint strike fight procurement, which is on our minds here in the chamber today. We do not mind where you get the money, but find the money from somewhere else.

The closest that I think we got to unanimity among the witnesses who presented was that we do not need this thing at all. Is it set up to compete with the Australia Council, this new Catalyst entity, or is it set up to complement it? If it is set up to compete, we just do not need it. If it is set up to complement it, why are the guidelines so muddy? And who asked for this thing? I think most of the witnesses and most of the arts community from one side of this country to the other would rather that we pretended this thing had never happened. Just stand it down and return the funds to the Australia Council. That is really the essence of the recommendations that we are presenting the parliament with today.

If the finance minister cannot find the money to fund this bizarre experiment then just stand it down and we will forget that it ever happened. I suspect Senator Fifield was thrown a hospital pass by the outgoing minister and by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. To his credit, Senator Fifield, who got to step in after the key decision had already been made to establish it and, I guess, for face-saving points of view maybe felt that he could not cash out entirely.

But what that means is that we are left with this rather awkward position of an entity that has, I think, about a third of its funding stripped away from it. That third of the money has been quietly passed back to the Australia Council so that it can get on with its work. But, of course, as the forthcoming budget rolls around and as the expenditure review committee cranks into gear, the arts community and those of us on this of the chamber—the crossbench and the opposition parties in this place—know that Senator Fifield blinked. He could actually have fixed this and he chose not t Either find the money from somewhere else or stand this entity down and put the money back into the Australia Council.

This is not over. Senator Bilyk put it, I thought, quite adeptly a short time ago—this is indeed a catalyst. It is a catalyst for further action, further advocacy, until we get this fixed. The money needs to back to the Australia Council so that it can get on with its work.

I think the main benefit—and I spoke on this briefly, I think, last week—of going through a process such as this is that it has shown the arts community who they are. They probably could have done without it. They would probably rather have been out there making art, getting grant applications in and getting on with the kind of work that they love to do. Nonetheless, people really stepped up. The community and the sector stepped up and now we have, I think, a much better idea of the shape of the community, of the way that it regards the Australia Council.

It is worth noting on the way through that the Australia Council was not completely immune from criticism but it received warm accolades everywhere we went. Everywhere we asked the question: how do you think Oz Co is doing? It does not have unlimited money. It cannot fund everything, but what do you think of its processes for dispersal of scarce Commonwealth funds? People came to the party and acknowledged that the former government should be given their due: they got it right. The guidelines that were just passed, the new proposals for six-year funding rounds, the way the peer review process is structured and the kind of stuff that gets funded—mostly, they got it right. It is rare to hear that degree of applause and accolade for a Commonwealth government entity. That was a valuable insight.

We know, as the budget cycle rolls towards next May, this is still an open question; this is unfinished business. I think Senator Fifield is up to it. He is not an arrogant individual and, as he starts to come to grips with the portfolio, he is going to realise that the path of least resistance but of greatest policy integrity—and certainly the politically smartest path—is going to be to restore the money to the Australia Council and maybe make some kind of little sculpture. We could probably get the arts community to throw in for some little token, a sculptural reminder, of this ridiculous experiment imposed by Senator George Brandis on the arts community. We can put it up—gift that to the minister as a reminder to future Australian governments that, if something is not broken, do not attempt to fix it.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to make a contribution to this debate, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Reference Committee's report into the impact of the 2014-15 Commonwealth budget decisions on the arts. I am inspired, because of the verbal diarrhoeathat was given to this chamber by Senator Macdonald. Quite frankly, coming from Tasmania, I understand and appreciate what the arts means to our state. In fact, Australia's arts community has a worldwide reputation for what we are able to achieve in this country.

I also want to place on record—and I have said this before—that I have never known a Liberal government that is so out of touch that they could polarise community groups that normally do not get up in arms about the government of the day. We had GPs around the country up in arms, campaigning against the tax that this government were trying to impose on every single Australian going to visit their GP.

Now Senator Brandis—what a mistake having him as Minister for the Arts; it is beyond belief—has managed to unite the entire arts community right around this great country by submitting 2,700 submissions to this inquiry. It is very unfortunate that I was not able to participate in this committee, because the contribution of Senator Macdonald—who, with all due respect, has been in this place a very long time—today and his behaviour at those hearings are an absolute disgrace. I know that those people on the other side of the chamber hang their heads in shame quite often when he makes a contribution in this place, but it was a terrible display from a respectable senator at those public hearings.

I want to thank those 2,700 submitters who took the time—and let's face it: the arts community is hardly rolling in money; a lot of their work is done by volunteers—to put together a submission and attend one of those public hearings. They were able to put their position, and to hear such a united and strong voice from the arts community right around this country is a credit to each and every one of them.

There was almost unanimous agreement that, if the new program was to go ahead, it must be new money and not at the expense of the Australia Council's program. This is a very, very short-sighted government. By creating this slush fund, if nothing else, Minister Brandis has united the arts community, because they are angry and confused and they have every right to be.

Senator Ludlam gave credit to Senator Fifield as the new minister—he has a lot more confidence than I have, because I have experienced what he was like when he was the assistant minister for aged care: he could not even roll out a policy and a framework that was already in place from the former Labor government; he could not even roll out something that was already planned. What Senator Fifield will do, I am afraid, is continue with Senator Brandis's policy. Therefore I do not have Senator Ludlam's confidence in Senator Fifield.

I sincerely hope I am proven wrong, because this country will be much poorer if we do not fund the arts community to the level that it should be, to ensure that people within the community—young Australians—have the support they need to participate in the arts in whatever form. It is another glaring example of how out of touch and arrogant this government is.

I spoke earlier today, as I have a number of times, about when those on that side in the Liberal Party knifed Tony Abbott and replaced him with the new Prime Minister. The community had a sigh of relief. They really did have a sigh of relief, believing that they had someone new, with a better suit, who could put a few words together. In fact, some would say he has verbal diarrhoea. But what the arts community are doing now is sighing with relief that George Brandis was sacked from that position. So they are hoping that Senator Fifield steps up to the mark and reinstates that funding that the arts community in this country deserve—and I hope that I am wrong and that he does.

The government can very easily put this uncertainty the rest, just as they can with the GST. We are fortunate enough to have the minister in this chamber. They can come into the chamber and make a statement to say that in the 2015-16 budget we will now restore that funding. In May, in the next budget, they can come in here and restore that funding. That would be a fantastic thing for him to be able to do. That would give me some confidence that the new minister is showing some vision and some leadership and will take the arts community with him to ensure that that funding is there and that all the arts community right around this great country can aspire to be the best that they can be.

I do take exception to Senator Macdonald when he comes into this chamber and espouses that we only set committee meetings around the availability of some members of that committee. That is not the way the Senate operates. I can assure you that, as a former chair of committees participating in the Community Affairs Committee, one of the busiest committees in this place, every endeavour is always made to accommodate all senators. So if Senator Macdonald was unable to get to any of those hearings he could have, by all means, ensured that there was a member of the government there. To say that the whole agenda was around Melbourne and Sydney is quite wrong, because that committee went down to Hobart to listen to what the Tasmanian arts community had to say, and their concerns reflected everything that was being said around the country.

I do know there are other senators who want to make a contribution, but I just wanted to place on record that the inspiration that I had to make a contribution was because of the verbal diarrhoea from Senator Macdonald and the attack on the institution of the arts community in this country.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee report and seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.