A delegation of more than 60 arts figures have met Labor and Green party politicians in Canberra to discuss changes to arts funding announced in the 2015 budget.
The meeting on Thursday followed Tuesday’s Senate vote, where a motion for a Senate inquiry into the new funding arrangement was supported by the Greens and Labor party as well as all eight crossbench senators.
The bill was co-sponsored by senators Scott Ludlam from the Greens and Jacinta Collins of the ALP, who both addressed Thursday’s delegation, made up of arts representatives from all eight Australian states and territories.
The shadow arts minister, Mark Dreyfus, and the Labor MPs Melissa Parkes, Andrew Giles, Graham Pettett and Tim Watts also spoke at the meeting.
Budget changes reallocating $105m from the Australia Council to a “national program for excellence in the arts” administered at the discretion of the arts minister and attorney general, George Brandis, have been roundly criticised by the arts community.
Hannah Kent, the award-winning author of Burial Rites and a co-founder of the Australian literary journal, Kill Your Darlings, which receives Australian Council funding, said the wide range of people in attendance at the meeting showed the industry’s concern.
“There has been a perception that arts organisations just by the fact that they keep going are OK and safe and don’t need the support of an arms-length government agency,” Kent told Guardian Australia. “This isn’t the truth.”
The money allocated to Kill Your Darlings by the Australian Council was “the means by which we pay 120-plus writers a year”, she said. The journal published an open letter about the funding changes at the end of May.
Dreyfus expressed regret at the uncertainty caused by the suspension of the council’s next six-year funding round for arts organisations. He described Brandis’s proposed excellence program as a “slush fund”.
“It’s not too late, Senator Brandis, to reverse these changes,” he said.
The arts minister’s plans were deeply unpopular, said Kent, “not just for artists but for Australians in general. Australians like culture. They spend a huge amount of money on the arts in comparison to the amount of money the government gives.”
Brandis was invited to address the delegation but declined. The Coalition party sent no representative to the meeting.
The arts minister instead met with AMPAG, the Australia Major Performing Arts Group, which represents the country’s 28 largest performing arts organisations in the country. He was joined by the foreign minister, Julie Bishop.
Later on Thursday in the Senate, Collins challenged Brandis over not meeting with the broader group of arts sector representatives at Parliament House and not consulting with the sector before announcing his funding changes.
Brandis responded: “If you knew anything about this sector, Senator Collins, which you plainly do not, you would know that the constant complaint that I have heard as the arts minister now in two Australian governments are complaints about people who feel shut out from the Australia Council process. They have constantly said to me, ‘We need an alternative funding channel,’ and that is what we have given them.”
The Senate inquiry into arts funding is scheduled to deliver its report by 15 September.
