The Napthine Government and the Minister for the Arts need to be aware that the aligning of positions with the Federal Government is fraught. Recently the Federal Minister for the Arts, Senator George Brandis, has ridden roughshod over the independent, peer-based system of assessment of support for arts bodies, many of them Victorian-based, through his intervention with the Australia Council.
Members will recall that the Federal Minister recently wrote to the Australia Council, the independent agency which allocates arts funding on the Commonwealth’s behalf to many Victorian arts organisations, asking that it develop a policy to penalise arts agencies that refuse funding from corporate sponsors on apparently unreasonable grounds. Not satisfied with this approach the Federal Minister then foreshadowed in correspondence to the chair of the Australia Council that he would direct the Australia Council to force it to adopt such a policy if it does not come up with one that is to his liking.
No-one argues that the issue, at either the State or Federal level, of artistic freedom and the mutual support that people and organisations seek from the corporate sector, is not fraught. However, there are some fundamental and difficult issues around how corporate support for the cultural sectors intersects with issues of artistic freedom and the role of arts in a modern society. It should be remembered that this is the same Federal minister who is currently arguing the case for the right to be a bigot. He somehow or other sees it fit at the same time to crack down on the rights of artists and arts organisations to deal with similarly complex matters of freedom of expression and freedom of political conscience.
Given that COAG ministers at the Cultural Ministers Forum in 2013 committed to the principles of aligning the different levels of government policy, it is distressing in the extreme to have heard no word from the Victorian Minister for the Arts on this issue. Perhaps she agrees with her Federal Liberal counterpart that she should be in a position of demanding compliance from independent arts funding bodies. Perhaps she agrees with what the Federal Minister for Communications, Mr Turnbull, called the “vicious ingratitude” of artists involved in the Biennale of Sydney boycott?
Who would know, because this Minister has been totally silent on the issues for which she has responsibility? Rather than come out and address the issues on which artists and cultural sector organisations need certainty as they pursue their ever-important corporate private sector support, particularly following three years of having their funding hacked into by this government, her silence is deafening.
The Minister needs to step up and condemn the Federal Minister for the Arts for his blatant politicisation of the arms-length funding model, which has served the arts both Federally and in Victoria well. The Victorian Minister needs to no longer be missing in action. She must defend the principles of both artistic freedom and political conscience and of freedom of political and artistic expression. She must not only oppose Senator Brandis’s attacks on the independence of the Australia Council, but also demand that it continues to be enshrined for the sake of the many artists, arts organisation and cultural sector supporters who wrestle with these complex issues day in and day out.
The Victorian Minister needs to be seen and to be heard. She needs to step up and defend the arts sector. She should be an advocate for the sector first and foremost rather than be an apologist for the Federal Liberal Party.
