On Friday the Minister for the Arts Senator Mitch Fifield announced he was abolishing the National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA), returning $32.4 million to the Australia Council and creating Catalyst, another Ministry-based funding program with broader guidelines, including allocations for small-to-medium arts organisations.
Catalyst will take over distribution of the remaining $72.4 million cut from the Australia Council’s four year allocations in the 2015-16 budget. That evening he explained his thinking to the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas. This is a transcript of that interview, supplied by Senator Fifield’s office.
