The federal government’s 48-year-old arts funding and advisory body gets $200 million in funding and a new name in a labor government overhaul to Australia’s arts and culture sector.
The Australian Arts Council, renamed Creative Australia, will receive two-thirds of the approximately $300 million the Albanian government has pledged to inject into arts, entertainment and culture over the next four years.
That’s more than a decade of stagnation and, in many cases, a lack of recurring funding, despite the $200 million Rise program committed by the Morrison government to avert an industry-wide collapse during Covid-19. This is followed by a significant decline.
The new national cultural policy, called Revive, is due to officially launch on Monday and was promised by current arts minister Tony Burke ahead of last May’s federal elections, but no pre-election details or dollars have been announced. There was no number for .
The policy establishes two new organizations covering music and literature, perceived to have been unjustly neglected under the previous administration. increase.
A new, dedicated organization, Music Australia will support and invest in the development of contemporary music in Australia.
Literature will operate under a new funding and investment agency, Writers Australia. Details of that will be outlined in the policy announcement on Monday. The sector learned on Friday that authors will begin receiving lending rights from audio and ebook loans for the first time under Revive. This is expected to increase author earnings by up to 20%.
The Labor Party has introduced legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, has given specific outlines for cracking down on fake art, and has pledged to establish new Indigenous-led groups. How should we develop new creative workforce strategies?
The $11 million funding will establish a policy partnership with the Australian Government to guide the future direction of Indigenous languages. The amount of her $80 million to build the National Aboriginal Art Gallery in Alice Springs (a project announced in last year’s budget and already pledged by the Northern Territory government) and the Aboriginal Cultural Center in Perth is unknown.
And in a move first warned by Burke in July to primarily address concerns of harassment and discrimination in the music industry, the entire government-funded arts sector will be overseen by a newly formed group, the Center. subject to fair wages and workplace safety measures. For the arts and entertainment workplace.
With the exception noted above, Monday’s Revive announcement is expected to be less focused on financial details, and many of the finer details aren’t expected until the May budget. Australia’s main collecting agency already knows they will have to wait four more months to find out their fate, and many say they have been on the financial knife edge for years. I’m saying
The screen industry, especially the previous government’s promise to spend another $400 million over the next four years to attract large-scale foreign film production to Australia through location incentive schemes, is also expected to be part of Monday’s policy announcement. Not.
However, Labor has promised a timeline for the introduction of quotas to force streaming companies such as Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Apple TV to spend a minimum percentage on explicitly Australian content.
The industry has called for streaming platforms to have to spend 20% of their Australian revenues on locally produced content, a figure that has yet to be disclosed. A labor spokesperson said consultations over the next six months would determine the final percentage, which would be enacted by the end of the year and take effect on July 1, 2024.
In a statement released on Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government’s cultural policy will continue to grow after a “lost decade” of federal policy, which will employ about 400,000 Australians to around 17 billion. He said it would bring back “ambition, direction and vision” to the dollar-sized industry. Ignore cash flow.
“Today we begin a new chapter for Australia’s arts and culture sector,” he said.
“It builds on the proud legacy of previous Labor governments that recognized the importance of arts and culture to Australian identity, social cohesion and economic prosperity.”
